“WHEN he had been at school for about three weeks, the boys called him Six-fingered Jack; but his real name was Willie, for his father and mother gave it him-not William, but Willie, after a brother of his father, who died young, and had always been called Willie.”
Young Willie Macmichael, a blacksmith, shoemaker, carpenter, and mechanic, discovers a medicinal spring where he builds himself quarters and later a hospital.