“Nothing the matter with your eyesight, is there?” Watson glared at Jim, shook a grimy finger at him. “I kin see nails as far as anybody, but I can’t look through an inch of timber to ’em. We always look out for nails, but it’s easy to see ’em. Bolts come to us from the vats with the bark peeled, and mostly the peelers get the nails with their spuds. But nobody kin see a nail that’s sunk an inch and the hole plugged. Yes, sir, that’s what I mean. The hole was plugged!” “How do you know?” “Strip of veneer showed it. Slice of plug was still stickin’ in. And we went over a dozen more bolts with a fine-tooth comb. We found one with a spot in it that looked suspicious. Dug it out and it was a plug! And we notched in and hit the nail. Now what does that mean?” “It means you’re to keep your mouth shut about it, and tell some kind of a story to your gang to keep their mouths shut.” “Somebody’s goin’ to get hurt,” Watson said, darkly. “Yes,” said Jim, slowly, “somebody is going to get hurt—bad.” “I s’pose I’ll have to look over every bolt with opery-glasses,” growled Watson. “I’ll give you a man who is to do nothing else. Tell Beam I said so.” Jim put on his coat and hat and went to dinner. His physical machine was such that it required nourishment, no matter what was happening to the mental department. Some men lose their appetites when things go wrong. Not so Jim Ashe. Some men drown their troubles in drink. Jim had his drowned three times daily in hunger. When he had eaten his dinner—for the Widow Stickney had only vaguely heard of a strange custom of moving that meal along till six o’clock and having a thing at noon called luncheon; to her, luncheon was something you put up in a basket and took to a picnic—he leaned back in his chair for his usual midday chat with the old lady. “You’ve lived here long, Mrs. Stickney?” “Born in the county.” “You ought to be pretty well acquainted with folks hereabout.” “Don’t have to live here long to be that. Everybody you meet is boilin’ over with anxiety to give you the true life history of everybody else. You kin git to know Diversity consid’able well in a week, if you’re willin’ to listen.” “Justice Frame’s lived here a long time, too, hasn’t he?” “Him and me was children together.” “Mrs. Stickney, I’m not asking this wholly out of curiosity. I’m new to you all. I’ve got my hands pretty full, and there are people in the world who would be glad to see me spill part of my load. It’s a fine thing to know whom you can depend on and whom you want to shy at. So I’m asking you to tell me something about Zaanan Frame.”