y years.

He loves stones and can no more resist a good stone than I a good book.
When going about the country, if he sees comely stones in a wayside
pile, or in a fine-featured old fence he will have them, whether or no,
and dickers for them with all the eagerness, sly pride, and
half-concealed cunning with which a lover of old prints chaffers for a
Seymour Haden in a second-hand book shop. And when he has bought them he
takes the first idle day he has, and with his team of old horses goes
into the hills, or wherever it may be, and brings them down. He has them
piled about his barn and even in his yard, as another man might have
flower beds. And he can tell you, as he told me to-day, just where a
stone of such a size and such a face can be found, though it be at the
bottom of a pile. No book lover with a feeling sense for the place in
his cases where each of his books may be found has a sharper instinct
than he. In his pocket he carries a lump of red chalk, and when we had
made our selections he marked each stone with a broad red cross.

I think it good fortune that I secured the old stone mason to do my
work, and take to myself some credit for skill in enticing him. He is
past seventy years old, though of a ruddy fresh countenance and a clear
bright eye, and takes no more contracts, and is even reluctantly
persuaded to do the ordinary stone work of the neighbourhood. He is
"well enough off," as the saying goes, to rest during the remainder of
his years, for he has lived a temperate and frugal life, owns his own
home with the little garden behind it, and has money in the bank. But he
can be prevailed upon, like an old artist who has reached the time of
life when it seems as important to enjoy as to create, he can sometimes
be prevailed upon to lay a wall for the joy of doing it.

So I had the stone hauled onto the ground, the best old field stone I
could find, and I had a clean, straight foundation dug, and when all was
ready I brought the old man over to look at it. I said I wanted his
advice. No sooner did his glance light upon the stone, no sooner did he
see the open and ready earth than a new light came in his eye. His step
quickened and as he went about he began to hum an old tune under his
breath. I knew then that I had him! He had taken fire. I could see that
his eye was already selecting the stones that should "go down," the fine
square stones to make the corners or cap the wall, and measuring with a
true eye