His mood had strangely changed; it was very early, and the skies were overcast, and in the clouded twilight we could scarcely see to do our work. Fitz-Adams seemed to be in no hurry; he was silent, and moved nervously. I wondered what this might portend, and braced myself for finality. It was very hard. I was learning to know the men; they ignored me still, but I was sure that I understood them better, and my liking for them grew each day, and earnestly I wished to stay, in the hope of winning a footing in the camp, and some terms of fellowship with the men. Fitz-Adams had stopped working now, and he stood leaning on the rigging as he spoke to me. There was a mildness in his tone and a tentative expectancy, as though an uncomfortable suspicion had dawned upon him, and he feared to verify it. "Say, Buddy, have you ever been to school?" "Yes," I said. There was silence for a minute, and the tone in which Fitz-Adams broke it was awestruck. "Say, Buddy, have you got a education?" "I've had good advantages." And then eagerly from him: "Major, can you figure?" It was my inning now, and I liked it, and I was guilty of saying that, within narrow limits, I could. "Will you do my accounts for me, Major?" "I will, with pleasure." Fitz-Adams drew a deep breath, and his voice fell to a lower tone. "Well, that'll be a good thing for me. I never had no schooling, and Sam the Book-keeper, he don't seem to know much more'n me. I guess I lost pretty nigh on to two thousand dollars on my contracts last year, on account of not knowing how to figure. Say, Major, this is pretty hard work for you; you suit yourself about this work, and help me with the accounts. Of course, I--I--I--didn't know----" "Oh, drop it, Fitz-Adams!" I said. "We understand each other. I'll be glad to look after the accounts as long as I stay; but it's growing light now, and let's get on this load." And so I won a place in the camp, and got myself on human terms with the boss. Fitz-Adams never referred to the matter again, but treated me in a perfectly manly, straightforward way, taking patiently my clumsy work as a woodsman, and accepting, as a matter of course, my help with the accounts, and even consulting me, at times, in certain details of the work. It was one of these consultations which brought a rare opportunity. I had won my way with the boss, not by virtue of an education, but actually upon the basis of an acquaintance with elementary arithmetic. When I came to look at the accounts, it was not a question of book-keeping that was involved, but simple addition and multiplication and division, in all of which branches both Fitz-Adams and Sam the Book-keeper were lamentably weak, so weak, in fact, that they felt no real confidence in their results.