other men would have
groaned at. Above all, he was glad to think that he was now considered
of some value in a work-a-day community.

It did not occur to him that day and night labour, even for a little
time, had a terribly wearing effect on the physique; that he was
losing weight with every twenty-four hours of it and that his cheeks
grew paler and a little more gaunt every day of that week or so of
extra push.

He chased Jim from the smithy as a worthless time-waster--whenever
that worthy showed face--and Jim, for the nonce, had to find
companionship and entertainment in his world of Penny Dreadful
creation and his Love Knot Untanglements.

One glorious gleam of sunshine burst in on Phil's world of toil and
set his muscles dancing and his heart singing in merry time to the
ring of his hammer on the anvil. A perfumed note, bearing an
invitation to him from Eileen Pederstone to attend a reception on the
sixth evening of the month following, at her new home on the hill, was
the dainty messenger of joy.

And what cared Phil if Brenchfield should be there? He had held his
own before;--he could do it again. What counted all this hard work?--a
puff of wind;--he was going to Eileen Pederstone's. What matter it how
the world wagged?--a tolling bell;--he would dance again with the
dainty, little vision with the merry brown eyes, the twinkling feet
and the ready tongue. Ho!--life was good; life was great! Life was
heaven itself!

Come on! Fill the smithy and the yard with your horses, and I'll shoe
all of them! Block the roads and the by-ways with your wagons and
buggies;--what care I for toil? Heap your broken reapers and binders a
mountain high, and I'll stand on top of them before nightfall, with my
hammer held defiantly to the heavens and shout "Excelsior, the work is
done." The Fairy Princess has stopped in her procession; she looks my
way; she smiles: her galloping courier brings a perfumed favour; she
beckons me. Ah, surely! what a Paradise, after all, is this we live
in!

In a sweet little world of dreams--in which even a blacksmith may live
at times--Phil battled with his tasks and overcame them one by one.

And it was little he cared about the week's growth of beard that sat
on his gaunt face, or for the sweat that ran over his forehead and
splashed to his great, bared chest. Pride did not chide him for hands
that were horny and begrimed, nor for arms that were red and scarred
from the bite of flying sparks.