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At seven the next morning he started in cheerfully to work. At nine, A. M., he had placed three large stones on the first course in position, an hour having been spent in looking for a pick and hammer, and in the incidental “chaffing” with Bridget. At ten o’clock I went to overlook his work; it was a rash action, as it caused him to respectfully doff his hat, discontinue his labors, and lean back against the fence in cheerful and easy conservation. “Are you fond uv blackberries, Captain?” I told him that the children were in the habit of getting them from the meadow beyond, hoping to estop the suggestion I knew was coming. “Ah, but, Captain, it’s meself that with wanderin’ and havin’ nothin’ to pass me lips but the berries I’d pick from the hedges,–it’s meself knows where to find thim. Sure, it’s yer childer, and foine boys they are, Captain, that’s besaching me to go wid ’em to the place, known’st only to meself.” It is unnecessary to say that he triumphed. After the manner of vagabonds of all degrees, he had enlisted the women and children on his side–and my friend, the Tramp, had his own way. He departed at eleven and returned at four, P. M., with a tin dinner-pail half filled. On interrogating the boys it appeared that they had had a “bully time,” but on cross-examination it came out that THEY had picked the berries. From four to six, three more stones were laid, and the arduous labors of the day were over. As I stood looking at the first course of six stones, my friend, the Tramp, stretched his strong arms out to their fullest extent and said: “Ay, but it’s worruk that’s good for me; give me worruk, and it’s all I’ll be askin’ fur.”

I ventured to suggest that he had not yet accomplished much.

“Wait till to-morror. Ah, but ye’ll see thin. It’s me hand that’s yet onaisy wid brick-makin’ and sthrange to the shtones. An ye’ll wait till to-morror?”

Unfortunately I did not wait. An engagement took me away at an early hour, and when I rode up to my cottage at noon my eyes were greeted with the astonishing spectacle of my two boys hard at work laying the courses of the stone wall, assisted by Bridget and Norah, who were dragging stones from the hillsides, while comfortably stretched on the top of the wall lay my friend, the Tramp, quietly overseeing the operation with lazy and humorous comment. For an instant I was foolishly indignant, but he soon brought me to my senses. “Shure, sur, it’s only larnin’ the boys the habits uv industhry I was–and may they niver know, be the same token, what it is to worruk fur the bread betune their lips. Shure it’s but makin’ ’em think it play I was. As fur the colleens beyint in the kitchen, sure isn’t it betther they was helping your honor here than colloguing with themselves inside?”

Nevertheless, I thought it expedient to forbid henceforth any interruption of servants or children with my friend’s “worruk.” Perhaps it was the result of this embargo that the next morning early the Tramp wanted to see me.

“And it’s sorry I am to say it to ye, sur,” he began, “but it’s the handlin’ of this stun that’s desthroyin’ me touch at the brick-makin’, and it’s better I should lave ye and find worruk at me own thrade. For it’s worruk I am nadin’. It isn’t meself, Captain, to ate the bread of oidleness here. And so good-by to ye, and if it’s fifty cints ye can be givin’ me ontil I’ll find a kill–it’s God that’ll repay ye.”

He got the money. But he got also conditionally a note from me to my next neighbor, a wealthy retired physician, possessed of a large domain, a man eminently practical and businesslike in his management of it. He employed many laborers on the sterile waste he called his “farm,” and it occurred to me that if there really was any work in my friend, the Tramp, which my own indolence and preoccupation had failed to bring out, he was the man to do it.