Napoleon drilled and said nothing.
The carpenter watched him in some uneasiness.
"Say, you ain't starting a shaft?"
No answer.
"Ain't this a placer? Say, you, are you deef?"
Napoleon pounded on the steel.
"Go to hell!" said the builder, as he had before, "—a man that can't answer civil questions!"
He resumed his labors, pausing now and then to stare at Napoleon, in a steadily increasing dubiety of mind.
In something less than twenty minutes he had done very little roofing, owing to a nervousness he found it hard to banish, while Napoleon had all but completed his holes. Then Van came leisurely strolling to the place, comfortably loaded with dynamite, of which a man may carry much.
With utter indifference to the man on the roof he proceeded to charge those shallow holes. As a matter of fact he overcharged them. He used an exceptional amount of the harmless looking stuff, and laid a short fuse to the cap. When he turned to the builder, who had watched proceedings with a sickening alarm at his vitals, that industrious person had taken on a heavy, leaden hue.