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He saw that the steeplejack had now reached the point where his work was waiting for him, work that required nerve and courage. He wondered whether it were highly paid; he wondered also by what means the man slung himself into position, and by what process the new gold had to be applied so that it would stick.
Below this was the sloping slate roof of the top of the steeple proper. Only a monkey or a "steeplejack" could get up there, and on a day like this, with a half gale still blowing, a steeplejack might be pardoned for declining the task. Swiftly the news spread, and a great crowd collected. Dave Darrin heard of it right after breakfast, and hurried to get Dick Prescott.
It was a statement which he accepted without question; it came to him with authority from one whose guidance in such matters he had ever been accustomed to follow and find correct. Before the weight of the moral law, he bowed his head and gave up the ghost of the dead steeplejack.
But he did so with a wry and a determined face. As for the King he was thoroughly put out; the steeplejack was by association beginning to assume in his mind a very particular importance; he had become a symbol not merely of the sovereign himself, but of that act of statesmanship which he had been adjured to undertake by his favorite newspaper.
For the man's presence at that dizzy height he knew that the Board of Public Works was responsible: as a single item in the general expenditure the weathercock of the Palace of Legislature had had voted to it a new coat of gilt, and this steeplejack was now engaged in putting it on.
But if so it was a wholly pleasurable sensation, for though his fancy went at a gallop, it was orderly, logical, and consecutive, not like madness at all. He dismissed the notion; but further reflection confirmed him in his determination not to tell anybody; he did not want to explain how he had walked upstairs fancying himself a steeplejack. It would have sounded stupid.
"It would be like murder to allow either of you to try. That's work for a regular steeplejack." "Well, what is a steeplejack?" demanded Dick. "He's a fellow of good muscle and nerve, who can stand being in high places. Either of us could climb a flagpole from down here in the street. Why can't either of us go up there, just as well, and climb from the steeple roof?"
The King was gifted with good sight; and though the figure appeared but as a tiny speck, it was unmistakably that of a man bearing a burden upon his back and ascending steadily toward the highest point of all. In a word it was a steeplejack. As the name passed through the King's mind it evoked recollection; and he said to himself again, "I wonder whether they call me Jack, I wonder."
Remember that there must be listeners as well as lecturers, and you may make a good listener, a quality none too common, but, as for lecturing, you have about as much chance of success as a man who could not climb ten rungs of a ladder without going dizzy, would have as a steeplejack.
Together the chums joined the crowd. "You'll have to get a steeplejack for the job, Mr. Macey," the chums heard one man advise the real estate operator. Only one was known. His home was some forty miles away. Mr. Macey tried patiently to get the man over the long distance telephone. Some member of the man's family answered for him.
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