Together they sought a favorable site for their new home, and it was as though the horrid specter of a few moments before had never risen to menace them, for the girl felt that a great burden of apprehension had been lifted forever from her shoulders, and though a dull ache gnawed at the mucker’s heart, still he was happier than he had ever been before—­ happy to be near the woman he loved.

With the long sword of Oda Yorimoto, Billy Byrne cut saplings and bamboo and the fronds of fan palms, and with long tough grasses bound them together into the semblance of a rude hut.  Barbara gathered leaves and grasses with which she covered the floor.

“Number One, Riverside Drive,” said the mucker, with a grin, when the work was completed; “an’ now I’ll go down on de river front an’ build de Bowery.”

“Oh, are you from New York?” asked the girl.

“Not on yer life,” replied Billy Byrne.  “I’m from good ol’ Chi; but I been to Noo York twict wit de Goose Island Kid, an’ so I knows all about it.  De roughnecks belongs on de Bowery, so dat’s wot we’ll call my dump down by de river.  You’re a highbrow, so youse gotta live on Riverside Drive, see?” and the mucker laughed at his little pleasantry.

But the girl did not laugh with him.  Instead she looked troubled.

“Wouldn’t you rather be a ‘highbrow’ too?” she asked, “and live up on Riverside Drive, right across the street from me?”

“I don’t belong,” said the mucker gruffly.

“Wouldn’t you rather belong?” insisted the girl.

All his life Billy had looked with contempt upon the hated, pusillanimous highbrows, and now to be asked if he would not rather be one!  It was unthinkable, and yet, strange to relate, he realized an odd longing to be like Theriere, and Billy Mallory; yes, in some respects like Divine, even.  He wanted to be more like the men that the woman he loved knew best.

“It’s too late fer me ever to belong, now,” he said ruefully.  “Yeh gotta be borned to it.  Gee!  Wouldn’t I look funny in wite pants, an’ one o’ dem dinky, little ‘Willie-off-de-yacht’ lids?”

Even Barbara had to laugh at the picture the man’s words raised to her imagination.

“I didn’t mean that,” she hastened to explain.  “I didn’t mean that you must necessarily dress like them; but be like them—­act like them—­talk like them, as Mr. Theriere did, you know.  He was a gentleman.”

“An’ I’m not,” said Billy.

“Oh, I didn’t mean that,” the girl hastened to explain.

“Well, whether youse meant it or not, it’s so,” said the mucker.  “I ain’t no gent—­I’m a mucker.  I have your word for it, you know—­yeh said so that time on de Halfmoon, an’ I ain’t fergot it; but youse was right—­I am a mucker.  I ain’t never learned how to be anything else.  I ain’t never wanted to be anything else until today.  Now, I’d like to be a gent; but it’s too late.”