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Then with a howl and a bound he entered the room and shattered the looking-glass into fragments. He bent down and looked closely at the pieces. "He's dead now," he said calmly, and walked out. Then he went to work at the post-holes again, just as though nothing had happened. Fifteen years have passed since then, and the man is still at Shingle Hut. He was the best horse Dad ever had.
Away went the completed roof of the modest cabin and down tumbled the sides. More post-holes were dug; more trenches excavated; more great oaks toppled over to be sliced into rafters, joists and uprights; more shingles two carloads; more brick; more plaster; more everything, including nails, locks, hinges, sash; bath-tubs two; lead pipe, basins, kitchen range and so the new bungalow was begun.
One day he would pan the sandy gravel, and the next day he would rest his back digging post-holes or something comparatively easy. He worked from daybreak until it was too dark to see, and he never left his claim except when he went to wash gold up in the gulch. The world moved on, and he neither knew nor cared how it moved; for the time being his world had narrowed amazingly.
Hammered copper bracelets, hematite celts and hemispheres, and mica plates, so characteristic of the Ohio tumuli, were also discovered here; and, as in East Tennessee and Ohio, we find at the bottom of mounds in this locality the post-holes or little pits which have recently excited considerable attention.
Five o'clock came and went, and the red-headed man said no word of stopping. Half-past five, six o'clock. And still they tightened wires, hammered burning staples, dug endless post-holes. Conniston's hands were torn with the sharp staples, blistered with the work. Half-past six, and he was ready to throw down his tools and quit.
However, he was very penitent, and returned with us to the ranch, where he dug post-holes for a couple of months, and behaved like a model babe. Ajax wrote to the archdeacon, and in due season The Babe returned to England, where he wisely enlisted as a trooper in a smart cavalry regiment, a corps that his grandfather had commanded.
"What kind of help did ye think of givin'? The insurance company will pay the money, the two horses is buried, an' we begin diggin' post-holes for a new stable in the mornin'. Perhaps ye were thinkin' of lendin' a hand yerself. If ye did, I can put ye alongside of Carl; one shovel might do for both of ye." Quigg colored and laughed uneasily.
The Toyman could hardly keep up with the questions; and he hadn't answered them all, either, by the time they reached the White House with the Green Blinds by the Side of the Road. On the afternoon of that same day, Marmaduke was sitting like a hoptoad, watching the Toyman dig post-holes in the brook pasture.
I ain't had no chance to aggravate him real good, outside of askin' him how his post-holes was winterin' through, when I'd meet up with him on the trail, an' invitin' him to go over to the Long Horn to have a snort of tea, a time or two, down to Wolf River."
That fence was growing to be more than a mere figure of speech The Happy Family did not love the digging of post-holes and the stretching of barbed wire; on the contrary they hated it so deeply that you could not get a civil word out of one of them while the work went on; yet they put in long hours at the fence-building.
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