'professors'--_i.e._ who did not claim to be 'saved'--were more truthful
and more to be depended on in their engagements than those who constantly
talked of righteousness. For all that--with a tremendous shaving--for all
that, the gospel was true.

So he planed and hammered, and got a large contract on a building estate
near a great town, busy as busy, where it was necessary to have a tramway
and a locomotive, or 'dirt-engine,' to drag the trucks with the earth
from the excavations. This engine was a source of never-failing amusement
to the steady, quiet farmers whose domains were being invaded; very
observant people, but not pushing. One day a part of the engine was tied
up with string; another day it was blowing off steam like a volcano, the
boiler nearly empty and getting red-hot, while the men rushed to fetch
water with a couple of buckets; finally, the funnel rusted off and a
wooden one was put up--a merry joke! But while they laughed the
contractor pushed ahead in Yankee style, using any and every expedient,
and making money while they sighed over the slow plough. They must have
everything perfect, else they could do nothing; he could do much with
very imperfect materials. He would make a cucumber frame out of a church
window, or a church window out of a cucumber frame. One of the residents
on the new building estate found his cupboard doors numbered on the
panels two, six, eight, in gilt figures inside, and in fact they were
made of pew doors which the contractor had got out of some old church he
had ransacked and turned topsy-turvy to the order of the vicar. He would
have run up a new Salt Lake City cheap, or built a new Rome at five per
cent. in a few days.

Meantime, at the little village, various incidents occurred; the sternly
virtuous cottagers, for one thing, had collected from their scattered
homes and held a 'Horn Fair.' Some erring barmaid at the inn, accused of