A dollar and a half a day! Surely a mere pittance; and yet the woman's face was radiant with joy.
It was not long before Challoner found that his arms and back and shoulders were perceptibly enlarging. At first it was merely at his physical strength that he rejoiced; but this, in turn, soon made way for a greater joy: he realised that his soul was surging back into his body; he had driven it out, but it would not stay away.
From time to time, Challoner noted that the tamping was developing him too much on one side. With the long broom handle, the weight down at the end, his downward stroke had been a right-handed one. So now he tried using force from the left side. And with that Challoner made a discovery!
After many experiments it had been gradually borne in upon him that light but incessant and vigorous tamping in one spot was more effective than the heavy, battering strokes employed by the Italians. The stuff was smooth and slippery when it first came in, and, consequently, all that was necessary was something to induce the stones to slip gently into solidity.
"If the tampers were only light enough," he argued to himself, "a fellow could almost use two of them, one in each hand."
And so he tried it with the two tampers that were on the work; but they proved to be too heavy. Then, one night, he made a pair of lighter ones and experimented with them. It was too much of a strain; he could not handle them satisfactorily. Somehow, the work needed the concentrated effort of two arms.
All one night he sat up trying to figure it out. "And yet," he assured himself repeatedly, "I'm on the right track." And so it proved. For at four o'clock in the morning the idea came.
"I've got it!" he exclaimed, jumping to his feet. "A pump handle!"
A week later, Challoner rigged up a simple contrivance depending upon strong leverage—one that would do the work of a man much more easily.
"It will do the work of two," he told himself.