that man of yours--the watcher Searby."

But all this was not done. Searby came and gave a good account of
himself--how he had been deluded away, and then so beaten with sticks
that he was glad to crawl home; and he needed no words to prove that he
had suffered severely in our service.

"Let's set the prosecution aside for the present," said Uncle Jack, "and
repair damages. We can talk about that when the work is going again."

This advice was followed out, and the insurance company proving very
liberal, as soon as they were satisfied of the place having been
destroyed by fire, better and more available buildings soon occupied the
position of the old, the machinery was repaired, and in two months the
works were in full swing once more.

It might almost have been thought that the flood swept away the foul
element that originated the outrages which had disgraced the place. Be
that as it may, the burning of our works was almost the last of these
mad attempts to stop progress and intimidate those who wished to improve
upon the old style of doing things.

I talked to Pannell and Stevens about the fire afterwards and about
having caught sight of three men landing from a raft and going down
towards the river just before the flood came.

But they both tightened their lips and shook their heads. They would
say nothing to the point.

Pannell was the more communicative of the two, but his remarks were
rather enigmatical.

"Men jynes in things sometimes as they don't like, my lad. Look here,"
he said, holding a glowing piece of steel upon his anvil and giving it a
tremendous thump. "See that? I give that bit o' steel a crack, and it
was a bad un, but I can't take that back, can I?"

"No, of course not, but you can hammer the steel into shape again."

"That's what some on us is trying to do, my lad, and best thing towards
doing it is holding one's tongue."

That spring my father and mother came down, and that autumn I left
Arrowfield and went to an engineering school for four years, after which
I went out with a celebrated engineer who was going to build some iron
railway bridges over one of the great Indian rivers.

I was out there four years more, and it was with no little pleasure that
I returned to the old country, and went down home, to find things very
little changed.

Of course my uncles were eight years older, but it was singular how
slightly they were altered. The alteration was somewhere else.

"B