knows that in my waist I've got a letter for you from
Mrs. Penelope. She seemed used up tonight. Her jewel of a husband took
dope tonight, so she and I sat in peace while she wrote this. I'll leave
it on your tray. Good-night to you, Boss. Don't slop on your suit."

CHAPTER XVIII

JIM MAKES A SPEECH

"I am permanent so I cannot fully understand the tragedy
that haunts humans from their birth, the tragedy of their
own transitoriness."

MUSINGS OF THE ELEPHANT.

Jim drank his tea, staring the while at the envelope that lay on the
tray. Then he opened the envelope and read:

"DEAR STILL: Don't say that I must go away. I want to stay
and help you. I promised Iron Skull that I would. I don't
want to add one breath to your pain--nor to my own!--and yet
I feel as if we ought to forget ourselves and think only of
the dam. No one knows you as I do, dear Jim. Iron Skull
felt, and so do I, that somehow, sometime I can help you to
be the big man you were meant to be. I have grown to feel
that it was for that purpose I have lived through the last
eight years. If it will not hurt you too much, please, Jim,
let me stay.

PENELOPE."

Jim answered the note immediately.

"DEAREST PEN: Give me a day or so to get braced and we will
go on as before. Stand by me, Pen. I need you, dear.

JIM."

But it was nearly two weeks before Jim talked with Pen again. For a
number of days he devoted himself day and night to the preparations for
starting the second section of the dam in the completed excavation. Then
formal notice came that the Congressional committee would arrive at the
dam nearly a week before it had been expected and Jim was overwhelmed in
preparations for its reception. The first three days of the
investigation were to be devoted to inspecting the dam. Jim brought the
committee to the dam from the station himself.

There were five men on the committee, two New Englanders and three far
westerners. They were the same five men who a year before had
investigated Arthur Freet's projects and they were baffled and
suspicious. And Jim's silence irritated them far more than Arthur
Freet's loquacity. The members from the West and from Massachusetts
were, in spite of this, open-minded, eager for information and
interested in the actual work of the dam building. The mem