Abe Pike was laying a new floor to his shed. He had at last, after many years, brought that wonderful structure to some semblance of a covered shelter, and now he was stamping down the red earth taken from ant-hills. This earth makes a firm floor, as it binds well and grows harder from use.
“Yes, sonny,” said the old man, “when animiles or insecks take a work in hand they do it better’n men. See this yer earth. Well, every grain of it’s been worked up by the jaws of a ant, and covered with a nateral mortar. It’s been all milled month in and month out, mostly after a fall o’ rain, each tiny pellet mined out o’ the smoking ground and carried by the little chaps way up the tunnels out inter the sunlight and glued to its place on the risin’ mound. An’ in the buildin’ of the dome them critturs don’t forget the chopped straw, and when they’ve carried their temple high above the groun’ they don’t forget, too, to narrow the circle till they come to the finishin’ peak. Yes, sir, I tell you, there’s more wonder in one of em ord’nary ant-hills than there is in the biggest cathedral ever built, an’ yet here I be spreading the remains of such works over the floor of this yer shed.”
“But ants always keep to the same designs, Abe.”
“Not they. In diffrent countries they have diffrent kinds o’ hills; but when they find the sort that’s best fitted for the climate they sticks to it, which is morn men do. No, sonny; the animiles an’ the insecks know what they start out to learn without goin’ to school for sixteen years, same as some young ones do that I know of, and then can’t tell a field of wheat from a barley crop. As for me, I’ve had no schooling; but I know how to do what I want to do.”
“How long have you been over this shed, Abe?”
“Lemme see. I laid the fust pole at the time of the big drought, maybe thirty years ago.”
“And when it’s finished?”
“Finished!” Abe left off stamping the red earth, and looked around with a strange expression. “I ain’t goin’ to finish it, sonny; no, what’s the use? When I begun that shed Abe Pike were a young man, and I seed under the roof of it when the work were done sacks o’ yellow wheat, piled up. The lands were young, I had a team o’ young oxen, there were young cows in the kraal, a good flock o’ sheep, an’ a crop of hopes in my head. That were thirty years ago, sonny, an’ the shed ain’t finished yet, and the cows is dead, the lands are poor, and Abe Pike don’t hope no more. I ain’t goin’ to finish this yer shed, not me; it’s all that holds me together. There’s a man buried in this yer shed.”
“What!”
“Yes, lad, that’s so. Young Abe is here—in the four corners, and under the ground, an’ in the roof, and the sides. Yes, young Abe hisself, an’ his sorrows, an’ his hopes, an’ his pride and laziness. I’ve worked him in these thirty years in loneliness, with the sound of the sea groanin’ in the air, an’ the hills lookin’ on, and the sky stretched abuv, workin’ him in slowly with nery an eye to watch, and what’s lef of him is this yer sun-dried karkus that’s standing afore you. That’s all.”