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“Hello, Maun,” came a woman’s voice from the pantry, half-drowned by the noise of a mechanical egg-beater. “D’juh get the marsh fence finished?”

“Rome wasn’t built in a day, you remember,” he replied as affably as his feelings allowed.

“That’s right,” she called above the sound, “but your old man prob’ly thinks it didn’t take over a week.”

Mauney was examining his hand near the coal-oil lamp on the kitchen table. The spike had completely perforated his palm leaving a torn wound that still bled. He tossed his hat to the old couch by the door and bent nearer the lamp. Although big-bodied he had a boyish face, filled now with youthful perplexity. The skin over the prominent bridge of his nose had an appearance of being tightly drawn, although his nostrils were as sensitive as the young lips beneath them. His chin, by its fullness, suggested a vague, personal determination to be expected in one older, but his eyes sparkled with that devotion of eager attention which is reserved to youth alone.