"With the 'ginneys,'" assented Challoner.
The foreman stared.
"All right," he said, after thinking a bit, "let's have your name."
For a brief second Challoner hesitated; there was a new light in his eyes when he said:—
"Challoner—J. L."
And all that day he worked—worked with his hands, and with his feet—worked with the gang tamping concrete. It is a simple enough process when one stands aside and looks at it; but after two hours of it, Challoner thought he would drop in his tracks.
It so happened that his work was on a new department store going up in town. Concrete suddenly had come into prominence as a building material. Challoner and the gang stood inside a wooden mould some two or three feet wide and as long as the wall which they were building; another gang poured in about them a mixture of sand, cement, and stone. Sand, cement, and stone meant nothing to Challoner, except that when those three things were mixed with water and dumped down into his trench, he had to lift up his tamper and pound, pound, pound the mixture into solidity, in order to fill the crevices, and to make the wall hard and smooth. Meanwhile, his feet were soaked; his boots were caked with cement; his hands were blistered frightfully; and his face was burned by the sun. Nevertheless, Challoner sweated, toiled on.
For days after this first day of labour he was stiff, lame, and sore all over. In his soul he wanted to die; but he lived on. And then, much to his amazement, he found that the harder he worked, the better he felt: the poison of his dissolute living was working toward the surface.
At last the day came when the doctors allowed him to visit Miriam in the hospital.
"I've got a job, dear," he whispered to her. That was all he told her then; but those five words were a history to Miriam.