o irrigate the land after we get
the water here, and two dams to complete." He got to his feet, his
cigar again forgotten, his eyes frowning down upon her. "Truxton is
right. We've got to get more men--many more men. And we've got to get
them in a hurry."

"Father, when he comes to-night, will know about the men we have been
expecting from Denver. He has been all day in Crawfordsville. What do
you think of Bat Truxton?"

"He is a good man who knows his business. He is a skilful, practical
engineer, and he knows how to get every ounce of power out of the men
under him. He is as much the man for the place as if he and the job
had been created for each other."

She was now standing with him, watching his face eagerly.

"Have you noticed," she asked, quietly--through the gathering dusk he
thought that he could see a faint shadow upon her face which was not a
part of the thickening night--"any sort of change in the man since you
went to work with him?"

Conniston hesitated, frowning, before he answered. "He has been
irritable," he finally admitted, with slow reluctance. "But the reason
is not far to seek and does not discredit him. He is heart and soul in
this work, Miss Crawford. Like all of us--you, your father, Tommy
Garton, me--I think that he feels his responsibility heavily, very
heavily. And when day after day rushes by and finds the work far from
being finished, and he has to have more men, and the men don't
come--good heavens! isn't it enough to make a man restive?"

For a long time Argyl made no answer, but, rising, stood looking far
out into the misty obscurity, as though she would look beyond to-day
and deep into the future for an answer to many things. The short
twilight passed, the warm colors in the west faded, the breeze of a
moment ago died down in faint and fainter whispers, the stars grew
brighter, ever more thick-set, in the wide arch of the heavens.

"I hope that you are right," she said, slowly, at last. And then, with
a queer little laugh which jarred upon Conniston strangely: "I am
getting fanciful, I suppose, and faint-hearted! Never has our
undertaking seemed so big to me; never have the obstacles loomed so
high. I find myself waking up with a start night after night from some
horrible dream that the water has failed in the mountains, or that
Oliver Swinnerton has stolen all of our men, or that Bat Truxton has
gone over to the opposition! Oh, I know that I am foolish. For, as you
say, we _c