"'Tis you that's the fine carpenter, Montreal," said Donegal. "But I've been wondering what was after bringing a man who could earn his three dollars every day ashore to sea."
Montreal sat down steaming by the stove, and laughed as he took out his pipe. Then he seemed to remember something and his face grew grave again.
"That's quite simple," he said. "I was working on a big railroad trestle back there in the ranges when one morning the contractor's foreman comes along. The bridge wasn't quite ready for the metals, and I was sitting on the girder with the river a hundred feet under me, anyway. They'd lost a man or two on that trestle already, and I was getting my five dollars a day.
"'You can drop those stringer ends into the notches without the tenon, and you'll do 'bout twice as many in the time,' says he.
"'I'm not doing them that way. It's not a good joint under a big load,' says I.
"'And what has that got to do with you?' says he.
"It wasn't quite easy explaining, but I knew just a little about what bridge ties can do, and the river was a hundred feet under the trestle.
"'Well, so long as I'm notching these things in I'll do them so they'll stand,' says I.
"The foreman he didn't say any more, but I knew what he would do, and when we were through with the trestle he comes to me. 'Here's your pay ticket and you can light out of this right now,' says he.
"I went, and trade was bad everywhere in the province that year. Nobody was taking on carpenters, and when I'd 'bout half-a-dollar left I went up on a steamboat that wanted patching up to Alaska. It was there I fell in with the sealers."