Cavanaugh stood silent. A negro was dumping the contents of a hod on John's board and scraping out the clinging mortar with a stick. When the man had gone down the cleated runway and John was raising his line for another layer of bricks, Cavanaugh sighed deeply. "Well," he said, "I'll tell you what I'm going to do, John. I'm going to mail the bid just as you made it out and trust to luck. I'm going to do it. I admit I've been awfully upset over it, but I can't remember that you ever gave me wrong advice, young as you are. My wife says I ought to do it, and I feel so now, anyway." It was as if John had not heard his employer's concluding words. He was standing on his tiptoes, leaning over and carefully plumbing the wall on the outside. "Yes, I'm going to drop it in the post-office right now," Cavanaugh said, as he started down the planks. "After all, there may be a hundred bids sent in, and some of the bidders may have all sorts of political pulls." Again John seemed not to hear. He was tapping a protruding brick with the handle of his trowel and gently driving it into line. "All right--all right," he said, absently, and he frowned thoughtfully as he applied his plumb to the wall and eyed it critically. CHAPTER IV The residence on which John was at work was almost finished. He was on the highest scaffold one morning, superintending the slating of the roof, when, hearing Cavanaugh shouting on the sidewalk below, he glanced down. The contractor, with his thin alpaca coat on his arm, was signaling to him to come down. "All right," John said. "In a minute. I'm busy now. Don't throw the broken ones away," he added to the workers. "Stack 'em up. We get rebates on them, and have to count the bad ones." "Right you are, boss," a negro answered, with a chuckle. "Besides, we might split somebody's skull open." "Oh, come on down!" Cavanaugh shouted again, with his cupped hands at his lips. "I want to see you." "I can't do two things at once," John said, with a frown and a suppressed oath. "Say, boys, get that next line straight! Look for cracked slate, take 'em out, and lap the smooth ones right." He found Cavanaugh near the front fence. The contractor was fond of jesting when he was in a good humor, and from his smiling face he seemed to-day to be in the best of spirits. "No use finishing the roof," he said, squinting along the north wall of the building. "That wall is out of plumb and has to come down. Great pity. Foundation must have settled. That's bad, my boy." "Well, it was _your_ foundation, not mine," John retorted, seeing his trend. "What do you want?" Slowly Cavanaugh took a letter from the pocket of his baggy trousers and held it in his fat hands. "What you think this letter is about?" He smiled with tobacco-stained lips. "How the devil would I know?" John asked, impatiently.