ing of the crane. It was an absorbing thing to see that
enormous groove cut down through the big hill, and to watch the growth
of the great mounds which grew up out of the marsh. The ditch that
should drain off all this murky water was, of course, the first thing
to be achieved, and, from the base of the hill through which it was to
be cut, the engineer ran a tram bridge straight across the swamp to
the new retaining wall; and from this, with the aid of a huge,
long-armed crane which lifted cars bodily from the track, the soil was
dumped on either side as it was removed from the cut. By the latter
part of December the ditch had been completed and connected with the
special sewer which, by permission of the city, had been built to
carry the overflow to the river, and, the open weather still holding,
the stagnant pool which had been a blot upon the landscape for untold
ages began to flow sluggishly away, displaced by the earth from the
disappearing hill.

The city papers were teeming now with the vast energy and
public-spirited enterprise of young Robert Burnit and Oliver P.
Applerod, and there were many indications that the enterprise was to
be a most successful one. Even before they were ready to receive them,
applications were daily made for reservations in the new district, and
individual home-seekers began to take Sunday trips out to where the
big undertaking was in progress.

"You sure have got 'em going, Bobby," confessed the finally-convinced
Biff Bates after a visit of inspection. "Here's where you put the
hornet on one Silas Tight-Wad Trimmer all right, all right. But the
bones don't roll right that the side bet don't go for Johnson instead
of Applegoat. He's a shine, for me. I think he's all to the canary
color inside, but this man Johnson's some man if he only had a shell
to put it in. Me for him!"

The unexpressed friendship that had sprung up between the taciturn
bookkeeper and the loquacious ex-pugilist was both a puzzle and a
delight to Bobby, and it was one of his great joys to see them
together, they not knowing why they liked such companionship, not
having a single topic of conversation in common, but unconsciously
enjoying that vague, sympathetic man-soul they found in each other.

CHAPTER X

AGNES AND BOBBY DISCERN DIAMOND-STUDDED SPURS FOR THE LATTER

About the first of February the filling and grading were finished and
the construction of the streets began, and the middle of March saw