Anon began a chipping and ringing of steel upon stone, that was, and was not, new to him.
Nearer and nearer he drew, yet afraid of exciting observation. He knew his own purpose, and felt as if the busy masons would know it too, and drive him away before his object was attained.
He watched the mason chip and dress the stones to shape until the one fitted its fellows, and they were laid side by side in a bed of mortar within the trench, and fresh mortar spread on these with a trowel to receive a second layer of stones for the foundation.
Then he went back to his own dry-wall building. But never had wall taken him so long before, for day by day he watched the masons at their work, and day by day learned something fresh--even the uses of square and plummet--until a well-built farrier's shed adjoined the blacksmith's forge, with smoothly-rounded pillars bearing up the roof.
He had learned the secret of the masons' tools, primarily the hammer, with which the stones were chipped and dressed. Unlike his own, it was steeled at _both_ ends, one end shaped like an axe.
From a smith in Caerphilly he obtained just such another before the week was out.
Brief apprenticeship! No premium paid! No years of servitude to a master! God had gifted him with peculiar faculties. He had a special bias; he had also intelligence, perseverance, and determination to succeed. He had achieved so far a measure of success.
He began to speculate on success he could not measure.
Five years had come and gone since that sad October when Evan Evans rode away from Brookside Farm buoyant with hope and expectation, yet from that hour no word or sign of his existence, no token of his death, had come to set feverish doubt at rest.
They had been five worrying and wearying years. For although William brought home his larger earnings to the common store, and his brothers did their best upon the farm, and there had been none but ordinary losses, the abstracted money had never been replaced. Mr. Pryse had prevented that with his extortionate raising of the rent. Then he had taken to visiting the farm at intervals, making free comments with sarcastic flings at Rhys, and cutting allusions to the still-missing Evans, and to the missing lease, which he insisted the man must have carried off, if it ever existed.