“Nonsense!” exclaimed Tom.  “The sawmill will be going in a moment.  All I have to do is to throw it into gear.  See here, Rad.  When you want the saw to go you just throw this handle forward.  That makes the gears mesh.”

“What’s dat ’bout mush?” asked Eradicate.

“Mesh—­not mush.  I mean it makes the cogs fit together.  See,” and Tom pressed the lever.  In an instant, with a musical whirr, the saw began revolving.

“Hurrah!  Dere it goes!  Golly! see de saw move!” cried the delighted colored man.  He seized a stick of wood, and in a trice it was sawed through.

“Whoop!” yelled Eradicate.  “I’m sabed now!  Bless yo’, Mistah Swift, yo’ suttinly am a wondah!”

“Now I’ll show you how it works,” went on Tom.  “When you want to stop Boomerang, you just pull this handle.  That locks the tread, and he can’t move it,” and, suiting the action to his words, Tom stopped the mill.  “Then,” he went on, “when you want him to move, you pull the handle this way,” and he showed the darky how to do it.  In a moment the mule was moving again.  Then Tom illustrated how to throw the saw in and out of gear, and in a few minutes the sawmill was in full operation, with a most energetic colored man feeding in logs to be cut up into stove lengths.

“You ought to have an assistant, Rad,” said Tom, after he had watched the work for a while.  “You could get more done then, and move on to some other wood-patch.”

“Dat’s right, Mistah Swift, so I had.  But I ‘done tried, an’ couldn’t git any.  I ast seberal colored men, but dey’d radder whitewash an’ clean chicken coops.  I guess I’ll hab t’ go it alone.  I ast a white man yisterday ef he wouldn’t like t’ pitch in an’ help, but he said he didn’t like to wuk.  He was a tramp, an’ he had de nerve to ask me fer money—­me, a hard-wukin’ coon.”

“You didn’t give it to him, I hope.”

“No, indeedy, but he come so close to me dat I was askeered he might take it from me, so I kept hold ob a club.  He suah was a bad-lookin’ tramp, an’ he kept laffin’ all de while, like he was happy.”

“What’s that?” cried Tom, struck by the words of the colored man.  “Did he have a thick, brown beard?”

“Dat’s what he had,” answered Eradicate, pausing in the midst of his work.  “He suah were a funny sort ob tramp.  His hands done looked laik he neber wuked, an’ he had a funny blue ring one finger, only it wasn’t a reg’lar ring, yo’ know.  It was pushed right inter his skin, laik a man I seen at de circus once, all cobered wid funny figgers.”

Tom leaped to his feet.

“Which finger was the blue ring tattooed on?” he asked, and he waited anxiously for the answer.

“Let me see, it were on de right—­no, it were on de little finger ob de left hand.”

“Are you sure, Rad?”

“Suah, Mistah Swift.  I took ’tic’lar notice, ’cause he carried a stick in dat same hand.”

“It must be my man—­Happy Harry!” exclaimed Tom half aloud.  “Which way did he go, Rad, after he left you?”