which gained him friends. Once or twice, to his comrades'
admiration, he engaged his persecutor in a wordy contest and badly routed
him, which did not improve matters. Indeed, his last victory proved a
costly one, because afterward when there was anything particularly
unpleasant or dangerous to be done, Kermode was selected. As it happened,
the risks that must be faced were numerous.

Kermode stood it for some weeks, though he grew thin and his hands were
often bleeding. In spite of this, his eyes still twinkled mischievously
and, when occasion demanded, his retort was swift and edged with wit. Now
and then he made reprisals, for when, as happened once or twice, a load
of gravel nearly swept the foreman down the bank, Kermode was engaged in
the vicinity. Another time, the bullying martinet was forced to jump into
the muskeg, where he sank to the waist, in order to avoid a mass of
ballast sent down before its descent was looked for.

There was a difference of opinion about the cause of Kermode's holding
out. Some of his comrades said he must have meant to wait for the arrival
of the pay car, so as to draw his wages before he left; others declared
that this did not count with him, and he stayed because he would not be
driven out. The Englishman took the latter view for, as he told Prescott,
Kermode once said to him, "I want the opposition to remember me when I
quit."

By degrees the foreman's gibes grew less frequent. Kermode was more than
a match for him, and his barbed replies were repeated with laughter about
the camp; but his oppressor now relied on galling commands which could
not be disobeyed. Kermode's companions sympathized with him, and waited
for the inevitable rupture, which they thought would take a dramatic
shape. At length two big steel dump cars were sent up from the east and
run backward and forward between the muskeg and a distant cutting where
they were filled with broken rock. This was deposited in places where the
embankment needed the most reinforcing, but after a while the foreman
decided that the locomotive of the gravel train need not be detained to
move the cars. They could, he said, be pushed by hand, and nobody was
surprised when Kermode was among the men chosen for the task.

Though the nights were getting cold, the days were still very hot, and
those engaged in it found the work of propelling a steel car carrying
about thirty tons of stone over rails laid roughly on a slight upward
grade re