and a sliver of wood curled up in front of it. Mr
Springett watched like an old raven.

'All art is one, man--one!' said Hal between whacks; 'and to wait on
another man to finish out--'

'To finish out your work ain't no sense,' Mr Springett cut in. 'That's
what I'm always sayin' to the boy here.' He nodded towards Dan. 'That's
what I said when I put the new wheel into Brewster's Mill in Eighteen
hundred Seventy-two. I reckoned I was millwright enough for the job
'thout bringin' a man from Lunnon. An' besides, dividin' work eats up
profits, no bounds.'

Hal laughed his beautiful deep laugh, and Mr Springett joined in till
Dan laughed too.

'You handle your tools, I can see,' said Mr Springett. 'I reckon, if
you're any way like me, you've found yourself hindered by those--Guilds,
did you call 'em?---Unions, we say.'

'You may say so!' Hal pointed to a white scar on his cheekbone. 'This
is a remembrance from the Master watching-Foreman of Masons on Magdalen
Tower, because, please you, I dared to carve stone without their leave.
They said a stone had slipped from the cornice by accident.'

'I know them accidents. There's no way to disprove 'em. An' stones ain't
the only things that slip,' Mr Springett grunted. Hal went on:

'I've seen a scaffold-plank keckle and shoot a too-clever workman thirty
foot on to the cold chancel floor below. And a rope can break--' 'Yes,
natural as nature; an' lime'll fly up in a man's eyes without any breath
o' wind sometimes,' said Mr Springett. 'But who's to show 'twasn't a
accident?'

'Who do these things?' Dan asked, and straightened his back at the bench
as he turned the schooner end-for-end in the vice to get at her counter.

'Them which don't wish other men to work no better nor quicker than they
do,' growled Mr Springett. 'Don't pinch her so hard in the vice, Mus'
Dan. Put a piece o' rag in the jaws, or you'll bruise her. More than
that'--he turned towards Hal--'if a man has his private spite laid up
against you, the Unions give him his excuse for workin' it off.'

'Well I know it,'said Hal.

'They never let you go, them spiteful ones. I knowed a plasterer in
Eighteen hundred Sixty-one--down to the wells. He was a Frenchy--a bad
enemy he was.' 'I had mine too. He was an Italian, called Benedetto.
I met him first at Oxford on Magdalen Tower when I was learning my
trade-or trades, I should say. A bad enemy he was, as you say, but he
came to be my singular good friend,' said