octor I'd make, wouldn't I?"

He laughed at himself, but Adelle felt that in spite of his mirthless
laugh his mind was chafing. He was dissatisfied with himself and the
work he was doing and hungered for some larger demand upon his powers
than laying so many feet of rock wall per day. She herself had so little
of this sort of hunger in her own soul that it made the young mason all
the more interesting to her.

"You might save up your money and try--" she began.

"To be a doctor?" he laughed back. "I saved up once--got most five
hundred dollars and a feller came along and persuaded me to put it into
some land. Well, I got the land still.... No, ma'am, there ain't much
chance to change for the workingman when he's once fixed in his creek
bed. He must just roll along with the rest the best he can. And I'm
better off than most because I've got a paying trade. Lots of boys like
me and my brothers don't learn ever to do anything, and just slave on
all their lives at any job comes handy until they are all wore out. Lots
and lots. Their folks can't keep 'em in school and they never know
enough to more'n sign their names. All they are good for is rough work,
same as the dago helper here. He thinks two dollars a day big money. I
guess it is to him."

He spat disdainfully with all an American's contempt for the inferior.

"I expect where he come from it was a fortune, two dollars a day, eh?"
He appealed to Adelle to appreciate the joke. "Think of that now! And
he's got a woman and kids, and I bet has saved money, too. But he's only
a dago," he explained tolerantly.

"Say," he resumed after a pause. "It costs more 'n two dollars to go to
the opery in San Francisco."

"Did you go to the opera?" Adelle asked, recalling that Archie had said
something about the current engagement of the New York Opera company.
They had a box or something for the season--they always did. "What did
they give?"

"Oh, it was some German piece. It took place in the woods with a lot of
folks in armor, but the music was fine, and there was one place where
they had a castle upon a big hill, like that where my shack is, way off
towards the clouds, and a river down in front going by with women in it
swimming," and he described with relish the last act of the
"Rheingold-dammerung," which Adelle recognized because she had seen it
many times in Europe and been horribly bored by it. The story of the
opera seemed to interest the young mason especially. He re