Paul and Addie actually were occupying the great front room and the kitchen of the old saloon while the work of reconstruction was going on. They worked evenings, early mornings, Sundays. Thor, newly returned from a two weeks’ trip to the north, scanned the two back numbers of the Northern Light. He then turned his attention to Addie’s tired beaming face and Paul’s tired harried face.

“Well, children, I hear you have a house.”

“Isn’t it wonderful!” Addie trilled, with perhaps a shade too many flute tones.

“You happy about it, Paul?”

Paul was silent a moment. Then he looked straight at the man whose loyal disciple he had chosen to be. “I’m happy to have a house. There are other aspects of it I’m not so happy about.”

“That’s good.” He smiled his strangely sweet childlike smile. “I’d like to talk to you a minute, Addie. And Paul.”

“Now!” She rattled the sheets of copy paper in her hand. “I’m just trying to get this stuff out, we’re going to press at three—–”

“No, not now, Addie. Not here. I’ll drop in on you at the house tonight about eight.”

“Oh, dearie, it’s a mess! I don’t want you to see it till it’s all—–”

The smile left his face. A compassionate sternness carved lines upon it.

“I’ll be there at eight.”

The long days had already begun. Eight in the evening was bright daylight. They had had their supper in the kitchen, they were busy with measurements which, calculated to cut off a twelve-foot section from the long front room, would provide a partitioned dining room.

“Oh, dear, he probably remembers this place from the bad old days.” Addie was being pert in an attempt to conceal her nervousness. “Will he reminisce?”

Paul, in shirt sleeves and work pants, balancing on a ladder as he jotted down figures, gazed down upon her with love and tender reproach. “I hope so. But he doesn’t do much of that. I think he has something else to say, tonight.”

“Sh! There he is. Come in, come in!” She ran to the door. Paul heard her say, perversely, “You’ve probably come through this door a lot of times, in the old days.”

“Not as many as I should have, perhaps.” He entered the big room, he stood looking about it, a giant of a man, ruddy, the shock of yellow hair silvered now. “In those days”—Addie threw a triumphant look at Paul—“the saloon was the warm pleasant place that welcomed you for the price of a drink—or no drink. It was the clubhouse, cheerful and hospitable. And the girls were a comfort and a help to many a lonely man.” He stopped abruptly, he measured the room again with his encompassing gaze. “Paul, this is a fine room. It can be a good home for you and your family, until you can build one.”

Addie began to talk with great vivacity. “Do you know what I’ve noticed since we began to clean and scrub up! On dampish days the most delicious saloony smell comes out of the floor and the walls and the woodwork. It’s a smell of bad whiskey and tobacco juice and cheap perfumery—I hope it’s patchouli, it always is in the novels—and sawdust and beer and cigars. Maybe it’s ghosts.”