He watched the mason chip and dress the stones to shape until the one fitted its fellows, and they were laid side by side in a bed of mortar within the trench, and fresh mortar spread on these with a trowel to receive a second layer of stones for the foundation.
Then he went back to his own dry-wall building. But never had wall taken him so long before, for day by day he watched the masons at their work, and day by day learned something fresh—even the uses of square and plummet—until a well-built farrier's shed adjoined the blacksmith's forge, with smoothly-rounded pillars bearing up the roof.
He had learned the secret of the masons' tools, primarily the hammer, with which the stones were chipped and dressed. Unlike his own, it was steeled at both ends, one end shaped like an axe.
From a smith in Caerphilly he obtained just such another before the week was out.
Brief apprenticeship! No premium paid! No years of servitude to a master! God had gifted him with peculiar faculties. He had a special bias; he had also intelligence, perseverance, and determination to succeed. He had achieved so far a measure of success.
He began to speculate on success he could not measure.
CHAPTER XVIII. IN THE GRIP OF A STRONG HAND.
Five years had come and gone since that sad October when Evan Evans rode away from Brookside Farm buoyant with hope and expectation, yet from that hour no word or sign of his existence, no token of his death, had come to set feverish doubt at rest.