“I want to try one of the rafters from the hut. One of those long things there. If you could give me the end of it——”
She did so, and Paul tried a balancing feat, like Blondin with a pole. He had braced the wooden sleepers together so that they lay solidly along the top of the wall, and resting the butt of the rafter against one of them, he prepared to lower it towards the ridge-beam.
“Hallo! Just a minute.”
He had paused.
“If the thing falls, our crockery may suffer. Pull that table into the corner.”
Manon pushed the table into a safe place, and watched Brent handle that length of timber. It was a ticklish job; an attack of nerves or some lack of balance might have landed him down below with a broken neck. Moreover, it was a test of strength; and when the rafter came to rest with some three inches of its end projecting over the ridge-beam, Manon sent up a little cry of applause and triumph.
“Oh, mon ami, splendid! And how strong you are.”
It was the man who dominated for the moment their little world of adventure, the man with the strong hand and the contriving head. Brent stood looking down at her and smiling.
“Now, then, the hammer and gimlet, a packetful of long nails, and the saw. I shall have half those rafters up to-day.”
She collected the tools and nails, made two journeys up the ladder and handed them to Brent. One end of the rafter was all ready cut to fit on the bedding-plate and Brent secured it with a nail driven half home, and then went up the slope of the partition wall, sawed off the upper end at an angle so that it dropped flush against the ridge-beam, and drove nails home.