you satisfy me, by
the time we reach Vancouver there won't be much of you left for the
police to take charge of."

Then the two locomotives started the long cars on their inter-ocean
race again.

CHAPTER XII

GEOFFREY TESTS HIS FATE

It was a lowering afternoon in the Fall, when Thurston and Julius
Savine stood talking together upon a spray-drenched ledge in the depths
of a British Columbian canyon. On the crest of the smooth-scarped
hillside, which stretched back from the sheer face of rock far
overhead, stood what looked like a tiny fretwork in ebony, and
consisted of two-hundred-foot conifers. Here and there a clamorous
torrent had worn out a gully, and, with Thurston's assistance, Savine
had accomplished the descent of one of the less precipitous. Elsewhere
the rocks had been rubbed into smooth walls, between which the river
had fretted out its channel during countless ages. The water was
coming down in a mad green flood, for the higher snows had melted fast
under the autumn sun, and the clay beneath the glaciers had stained it.
Foam licked the ledges, a roaring white wake streamed behind each
boulder's ugly head, and the whole gloomy canyon rang with the thunder
of a rapid, whose filmy stream whirled in the chilly breeze.

Savine gazed at the rapid and the whirlpool that fed it, distinguishing
the roar of scoring gravel and grind of broken rock from its vibratory
booming, and though he was a daring man, his heart almost failed him.

"It looks ugly, horribly ugly, and I doubt if another man in the
Dominion would have suggested tackling the river here, but you are
right," he admitted. "Human judgment has its limits, and the constant
bursts have proved that no dykes which wouldn't ruin me in the building
could stand high-water pressure long. If you don't mind, Thurston,
we'll move farther from the edge. I've been a little shaky since that
last attack."

"The climb down was awkward, but you have looked better lately,"
declared Geoffrey and Savine sighed.

"I guess my best days are done, and that is one reason why I wish to
end up with a big success," he said. "I got a plain warning from the
Vancouver doctor you brought me in that morning. You managed it
smartly."

"I was lucky," said Thurston, laughing. "At first, I expected to be
ignominiously locked up after the engineer and fireman had torn my
clothes off me. But we did not climb down here to talk of that."

"No!" and Savine looked st