om their work to her sides.

"How goes it?" asked the beggar.

"If it goes as it's gone," she said--"if it only does!"

"It _will_," said the beggar, and there was a strong vibration of faith
and encouragement in his voice. "May I look?"

"Of course."

He came down from the platform, and she could not but admire the almost
superhuman facility with which he moved upon his crutches. Halting at
ease, before the beginning which she had made, he remained for a long
time silent. Then, turning to her, he freed his right hand from the
cross-piece of his crutch, and lifted it to his forehead in a sort
of salute.

"Master!" he said.

The blood in Barbara's veins tingled with pleasure. He had thrown into
his strong, rich voice an added wealth of sincerity, and she knew, or
thought she knew, that at last the work of her hands had moved another,
who, whatever else he might have been, was by his own showing no fool,
but a man having in him much that was extraordinary. And she felt a
sudden friendliness for the legless beggar.

His eyes still upon the clay--knowing, considering, measuring,
appraising eyes--he said shortly and with decision: "We must go on
with this."

"To-morrow--could you come to-morrow at the same time?"

"I _will_," he said.

"Good. Are you hungry?"

But the legless man did not appear to have heard her. A sound in the
adjoining room had arrested his attention. He listened to it critically
and then smiled.

"A good workman," he said, "is turning a screw into wood."

"How clever of you," said Barbara. "There was a man coming from
Schlemmer's to put on some glass knobs for me. Bubbles has brought him
in by the back stairs."

The faint crunching sound of the screw going into the wood ceased. There
was a knock on the door.

"Come in," said Barbara.

Bubbles appeared in the opening. "We're all through in here."

It did not at once strike Barbara that to have finished his work in the
next room the man from Schlemmer's must have arrived upon the scene very
much earlier than he had promised. And she could not by any possibility
have guessed that Bubbles, in a state of nervous alarm, had slipped down
the back stairs and run all the way to the hardware store to fetch him.

"He may as well begin in here, then," she said; "I'm through for this
morning." And she turned to the beggar. "To-morrow--at the same time?"

He nodded briefly, but did not at once turn to go. He wished, it seemed,
to have a good