Mr. Farah stood on the empty lot with a rolled sketch under his arm and no walls to hang it on. Twenty-three children in Donnellila could not read their own names. He had come out of a quiet retirement to teach them, and the parents had promised him a schoolhouse by autumn. Autumn was here. The lot was still grass. He unrolled the sketch on a stump. Two stories. A bell. A porch wide enough for lunch pails. He had drawn it three times to get the roof pitch right. Every day he waited, another child forgot another letter. He walked to the sawmill first. Jim stood in the doorway wiping pitch off his hands. The saw sat quiet behind him. "I need lumber," Mr. Farah said. "Enough for a schoolhouse." "I've got logs stacked to the rafters," Jim said. "I can't cut them clean without my father. He reads the grain. I don't." "When does he come?" "Four days north. I sent word a week ago." Mr. Farah walked to the bank next. The building was half-framed, the vault pit still open. Mr. McBanks met him at the door in shirtsleeves. He had turned away every family's silver until the vault was stone and iron. He would not release a coin for anyone else either. "Come back when I've a floor," Mr. McBanks said. "I'll hear you then." Mr. Farah went to Carol at the realty office. She sat behind a plank desk with a ledger open. She looked up before he spoke. "You need the lot cleared and a crew," she said. "I've been waiting for you to ask." "I've no lumber and no money." Carol closed the ledger. "You've got twenty-three children and forty-one households. That's the money. I'll knock on doors tonight. You go to Jim's father yourself. Four days up, four days back. Take a horse." "He's retired." "He's bored," she said. "Tell him his son can't run the mill without him. He'll come." Mr. Farah rode north the next morning. He found the old man splitting kindling behind a leaning cabin. He delivered the message in one sentence. The old man set down the axe and packed a bag before noon. They were back in Donnellila in three days. The saw started that afternoon. Carol had pledges from thirty-one households by then, stacked as flour, nails, and hours of labor. Jim's father read each log and marked it in chalk. The boards came off straight and true. Six weeks later the schoolhouse stood on the lot. Red siding, a bell in the cupola, a porch with a painted sign above the door. Mr. Farah rang the bell on a Monday morning. Twenty-three children came up the steps. He counted them at the threshold. Nineteen chairs waited inside. He had built a school with not enough seats.