ward to their haunches. The raw
earth-ends were crawling and alive with hundreds upon hundreds of tiny
asses climbing out of the yawning borrow-pit below with sackfuls of stuff;
and the hot afternoon air was filled with the noise of hooves, the rattle
of the drivers' sticks, and the swish and roll-down of the dirt. The river
was very low, and on the dazzling white sand between the three centre
piers stood squat cribs of railway-sleepers, filled within and daubed
without with mud, to support the last of the girders as those were riveted
up. In the little deep water left by the drought, an overhead-crane
travelled to and fro along its spile-pier, jerking sections of iron into
place, snorting and backing and grunting as an elephant grunts in the
timber-yard. Riveters by the hundred swarmed about the lattice side-work
and the iron roof of the railway-line, hung from invisible staging under
the bellies of the girders, clustered round the throats of the piers, and
rode on the overhang of the footpath-stanchions; their fire-pots and the
spurts of flame that answered each hammer-stroke showing no more than pale
yellow in the sun's glare. East and west and north and south the
construction-trains rattled and shrieked up and down the embankments, the
piled trucks of brown and white stone banging behind them till the
side-boards were unpinned, and with a roar and a grumble a few thousand
tons more material were thrown out to hold the river in place.

Findlayson, C. E., turned on his trolley and looked over the face of the
country that he had changed for seven miles around. Looked back on the
humming village of five thousand workmen; up stream and down, along the
vista of spurs and sand; across the river to the far piers, lessening in
the haze; overhead to the guard-towers--and only he knew how strong those
were--and with a sigh of contentment saw that his work was good. There
stood his bridge before him in the sunlight, lacking only a few weeks'
work on the girders of the three middle piers--his bridge, raw and ugly as
original sin, but _pukka_--permanent--to endure when all memory of the
builder, yea, even of the splendid Findlayson truss, had perished.
Practically, the thing was done.

Hitchcock, his assistant, cantered along the line on a little
switch-tailed Kabuli pony, who, through long practice, could have
trotted securely over a trestle, and nodded to his chief.

"All but," said he, with a smile.

"I've been thinking abo