u, Argyl, who actually sends the first water to reclaim
Rattlesnake Valley. Are you glad, Argyl?"

If Argyl was glad, she did not say so. For a moment she stood with her
face in her two hands, sobbing. And then, laughing softly, the tears
upon her cheeks catching fire from the first rays of the rising sun,
she lifted her face to Greek Conniston's, and, drawing his face down,
kissed him.

The new day had leaped out at them, whipping the last shreds of misty
darkness from the face of the earth. Down yonder, below them upon the
slope of the hills, they saw the Lark and his hundred men preparing
for breakfast. Only in the bed of Deep Creek alone, below the dam
where a trickle of water ran thread-like, was there any shadow. And
suddenly something moving within the breaking darkness there caught
Conniston's eye.

It was a man running, running swiftly downstream, running as though
pursued by no less terrible a thing than death, stumbling, rising,
running again. Something in the man's carriage struck Conniston as
familiar, while he could not make out who it was. Then the light grew
stronger, rosier, and he cried out in surprise.

"Hapgood!" he exclaimed. "Roger Hapgood!"

And almost before the words had left his lips he cried out in a new
tone, a tone of horror, and, seizing Argyl's hand in his, ran with
her, crying for her to hurry, urging her to run with him, away from
the dam. For his eyes had seen another thing in the creek-bed, a
something just at the base of the dam at its lowest side. It was a
little sputtering flame, such a flame as is made by a burning bit of
fuse.

Hapgood, still running, had climbed up the steep right bank, had run
almost into the men's camp, had turned suddenly and dashed back down
the bank, to run across the creek and climb the farther side.
Conniston and Argyl as they fled from the threatened dam could see him
as he clambered upward, could see the loose stones and dirt set
sliding, rattling from under his hurrying feet and clawing hands.

Then came the thundering roar of the explosion. The great dam, the
citadel of all hopes of success, tottered like a stone wall smitten
with a thousand battering-rams, tottered and shook to its foundations.
And then, as a dozen explosions merged into one, the whole thing
leaped skyward, as though hurled aloft from some Titan's sling, and,
leaping, burst asunder, flying in a thousand directions, raining rock
and mortar far and wide along the slopes of the