ar is that of dynamite where the construction gangs of
Regan's new line are breaching the distant hills for entrance into Great
Southwest territory.

Regan is coming on, undaunted by the refusal of Barlow to let him
through; day by day the iron rumor swells in the northern sky, and Tim
sleeping or waking presses close after the vision of a giant of bronze
with half-lidded smoldering eyes who juggles men and steel in the
burning dusk beyond the construction camps.

Defiant of the winter winds, even to refusing the jacket which Katy buys
for him, he shivers with the chill of exhaustion, for now he must
struggle the more fiercely with ambition, night and day. Yet on he
plods, keening in that strange little whistle. All this bleak stretch of
his history he crosses, in a sort of delirium loading the battered old
car with company of the make-believe kind whom he has watched the
children in the city parks playing with long ago. The ghost of a
jack-in-the-box which he had once dragged away from a playground and
murdered with a stick in his den appears by night in the terminal
building. It smiles forgivingly and he frowns back.

When the snow falls he marches ahead of Charley, a shovel on his
shoulder, storming the drifts. A rope round his body keeps the whipping
rags together, and he wears an old sack for a waistcoat. The limekiln
closes down and there is no passenger left but Katy, so Tim breaks into
the treasure holes in the wall to buy oats and bread. Once again the
Barlow Suburban is devouring its master. And now the rumble of dynamite
sinks lower and lower like the death rattle of Regan's destiny and one
afternoon dies away entirely.

That night Tim sits cross-legged on his pallet by his rusty little
stove, awe-stricken, as if somehow a battle waited on him. And out of
that dread stillness under the northern sky Regan comes to him, streaked
red with the clay of the camps.

"Craney is lost or dead," he says. "I have searched high and low; now it
is up to you."

The boy listening intently agrees with Regan. "'T is too bad I promised
Craney and have the duty."

"You are far from a fool," says Regan; "look out of the window here with
me." And as they stare up the yards, awink with the colored lamps of the
switch stands: "Do you see the giant black engines and cars, and the
shops beyond with their roaring mountains of machinery; the tracks
stretching thousands of miles, all swarming with trains and men? Such
are the pl