fashioned story-and-a-half Cape Cod house,
painted a speckless white, with vivid green blinds. The blinds
were shut now, for the house was unoccupied. House and shop and
both yards were neat and clean as a New England kitchen.

Gabriel Bearse, after a moment's reflection, opened the gate in the
picket fence and walked along the clamshell walk to the shop door.
Opening the door, he entered, a bell attached to the top of the
door jingling as he did so. The room which Mr. Bearse entered was
crowded from floor to ceiling, save for a narrow passage, with hit-
or-miss stacks of the wooden toys evidently finished and ready for
shipment. Threading his way between the heaps of sailors, mills,
vanes and boats, Gabriel came to a door evidently leading to
another room. There was a sign tacked to this door, which read,
"PRIVATE," but Mr. Bearse did not let that trouble him. He pushed
the door open.

The second room was evidently the work-shop. There were a circular
saw and a turning lathe, with the needful belts, and a small
electric motor to furnish power. Also there were piles of lumber,
shelves of paint pots and brushes, many shavings and much sawdust.
And, standing beside a dilapidated chair from which he had
evidently risen at the sound of the door bell, with a dripping
paint brush in one hand and a wooden sailor in the other, there was
a man. When he saw who his visitor was he sat down again.

He was a tall man and, as the chair he sat in was a low one and the
heels of his large shoes were hooked over its lower rounds, his
knees and shoulders were close together when he bent over his work.
He was a thin man and his trousers hung about his ankles like a
loose sail on a yard. His hair was thick and plentiful, a brown
sprinkled with gray at the temples. His face was smooth-shaven,
with wrinkles at the corners of the eyes and mouth. He wore
spectacles perched at the very end of his nose, and looked down
over rather than through them as he dipped the brush in the can of
paint beside him on the floor.

"Hello, Shavin's," hailed Mr. Bearse, blithely.

The tall man applied the brush to the nude pine legs of the wooden
sailor. One side of those legs were modestly covered forthwith by
a pair of sky-blue breeches. The artist regarded the breeches
dreamily. Then he said:

"Hello, Gab."

His voice was a drawl, very deliberate, very quiet, rather soft and
pleasant. But Mr. Bearse was not pleased.

"Don't call me