lenly in the mire under a scorching heat,
for it was summer in the wilderness.

Affairs were in this condition when Clarence Weston crawled out of the
swamp one evening and sat down on a cedar log before he followed his
comrades up the track, though he supposed that supper would shortly be
laid out in the sleeping-shanty. The sunlight that flung lurid flecks
of color upon the western side of the fir trunks beat upon his
dripping face, which, though a little worn and grim just then, was
otherwise a pleasant face of the fair English type. In fact, though he
had been some years in the country, Englishman was unmistakably
stamped upon him. He was attired scantily and simply in a very old
blue shirt, and trousers, which also had once been blue, of duck; and
just then he was very weary, and more than a little lame.

He had cut himself about the ankle when chopping a week earlier, and
though the wound had partly healed his foot was still painful. There
were also a good many other scars and bruises upon his body, for the
cost of building a western railroad is usually heavy. Still, he had an
excellent constitution, and was, while not particularly brilliant as a
rule, at least whimsically contented in mind. His comrades called him
the Kid, or the English Kid, perhaps on account of a certain delicacy
of manner and expression which he had somehow contrived to retain,
though he had spent several years in logging camps, and his age was
close onto twenty-five.

While he sat there with the shovel that had worn his hands hard lying
at his feet, Cassidy, who had not recovered from the interview he had
had with Stirling that morning, strode by, hot and out of temper, and
then stopped and swung round on him.

"Too stiff to get up hustle before the mosquitoes eat you, when
supper's ready?" he said.

Weston glanced down at his foot.

"I was on the gravel bank all afternoon. It's steep. Seemed to wrench
the cut."

"Well," said Cassidy, "I've no kind of use for a man who doesn't know
enough to keep himself from getting hurt. You have got to get that
foot better right away or get out."

He shook a big, hard fist at the swamp.

"How'm I going to fill up that pit with a crowd of stiffs and
deadbeats like those I'm driving now? You make me tired!"

He did not wait for an answer to the query, but plodded away; and
Weston sat still a few minutes longer, with a wry smile in his eyes.
He resented being over-driven, though he was more or l