"As far as you have gone, Emon, I think they are complate; we'll have forty carts of stones in afore Saturda' night. I hope you have help enough, boy." "Plenty, sir, until we begin to cover in." "Wouldn't you be able for that yourself? or couldn't you bring your father with you? I'd wish to put whatever I could in your way." "Thank you, sir, very much. I will do so if I want more help; but for the lucre of keeping up his wages and mine, I would not recommend you to lose this fine weather in covering in the drains." "You are an honest boy, Emon, and I like your way of talkin', as well as workin'; plaise God we won't see you or your father idle." Up to this it will be seen that Emon was not idle in any sense of the word. He was ingratiating himself, but honestly, into the good graces of old Ned; "if he was not fishing, he was mending his nets;" and the above conversation will show that he was not a dance at that same. It happened, upon one or two occasions, that old Ned was with Emon at leaving off work in the evening, and he asked him to "cum' up to the house and have a dhrink of beer, or whiskey-and-wather, his choice." But Emon excused himself, saying he was no fit figure to go into any decent man's parlor in that trim, and indeed his appearance did not belie his words; for he was spotted and striped with yellow clay, from his head and face to his feet, and the clothes he brought to the work were worth nothing. "Well, you'll not be always so, Emon, when you're done wid the scoopin'," said old Ned; and he added, laughing, "The divil a wan o' me'd know you to be the same boy I seen cumin' out o' mass a Sunda'." Emon had heard, as everybody else had heard, that Tom Murdock had left home, and he felt as if an incubus had been lifted off his heart. Not that he feared Tom in any one way; but he knew that his absence would be a relief to Winny, and, as such, a relief to himself. Emon was now as happy as his position and his hopes permitted him to be; and there can be little doubt but this happiness arose from an understanding between himself and Winny; but how, when, or where that understanding had been confirmed, it would be hard to say.