an injury. I think it was about the same time that we
pulled off the plaster from the living-room ceiling and left the exposed
beams--old hewn timbers which we tinted down with a dull stain. William
Deegan and I stained those beams together, and our friendship ripened
during that employment. William had been with us about a year at this
period--not steadily, because now and then would come a day when with
sadness and averted eyes he would say, "I think I'll be goin' now, for a
little while," after which the effacement of William for perhaps a week,
followed by his return some morning, pale, delapidated, as on the
morning of his first arrival.

In the beginning I had argued, even remonstrated, but without effect.
William only said, humbly: "It comes over me to be goin', and I have to
do it. I'll be dacent ag'in, whin I get back."

During one such period of absence there came a telephone call from the
sheriff of the nearest town of size.

"Do you know a man named William Deegan?"

"We do."

"He is in the calaboose here. His fine and costs amount to five dollars.
Do you want to redeem him?"

"We do."

Clearly William's vacation had been unusual, even for him. We sent up
the money and William was home that night, more crushed, more pale, more
dilapidated than ever. He had worn a new suit away. He returned with a
mere rag. We thought this might cure him, but nothing could do that. We
could redeem William, but he could not redeem himself. These occasional
lapses were the only drawback of that faithful, industrious soul, and we
let them go. We had been unable to forgive them in the light-headed,
literary Gibbs.

But William here is a digression; I was speaking of our improvements. We
decided one year that we must have more flowers--a real garden. We made
it on the side of the house where before had been open field--walled in
a space where there was an apple-tree, a place large enough to assemble
all the things we loved most and that grew with an economy of care. In a
little while it was a glorious tangle that we admired exceedingly, and
that our artist friends tried to paint.

Another year we converted my study behind the chimney into a pantry,
opened it into the kitchen, made the "best room" into a dining-room, and
left the long living-room with the big fireplace for library use only.
That was a radical change and I had to build me a study over on a cedar
slope--a good deal of a house, in fact, where I could gathe