rhaps the companionship of his old friends
and the anticipation of action would effect a change in him.

Neale and Larry spent the night in Slingerland's tent. Next morning
the trapper was ready with horses at an early hour, but, owing to the
presence of Sioux in the vicinity, it was thought best to wait for the
work-train and ride out on the plains under its escort.

By and by the train, with its few cars and half a hundred workmen, was
ready, and the trapper and his comrades rode out alongside. Some few
miles from camp the train halted at a place where stone-work and filling
awaited the laborers. Neale was again interested, in spite of himself.
Yet his love for that railroad was quite as hopeless as other things in
his life.

These laborers were picked men, all soldiers, and many Irish; they
stacked their guns before taking up shovels and bars.

"Dom me if it ain't me ould fri'nd Neale!" exclaimed a familiar voice.

And there stood Casey, with the same old grin, the same old black pipe.

Neale's first feeling of pleasure at seeing the old flagman was
counteracted by one of dismay at the possibility of coming in contact
with old acquaintances. It would hurt him to meet General Lodge or any
of the engineers who had predicted a future for him.

Shane and McDermott were also in this gang, and they slouched forward.

"It's thot gun-throwin' cowboy as wuz onct goin' to kill Casey!"
exclaimed McDermott, at sight of Larry.

Neale, during the few moments of reunion with his old comrades of the
survey, received a melancholy insight into himself and a clearer view of
them. The great railroad had gone on, growing, making men change. He had
been passed by. He was no longer a factor. Along with many, many other
men, he had retrograded. The splendid spirit of the work had not gone
from him, but it had ceased to govern his actions. He had ceased to
grow. But these uncouth Irishmen, they had changed. In many ways they
were the same slow, loquacious, quarreling trio as before, but they
showed the effect of toil, of fight, of growth under the great movement
and its spirit--the thing which great minds had embodied; and these
laborers were no longer ordinary men. Something shone out of them. Neale
saw it. He felt an inexplicable littleness in their presence. They had
gone on; he had been left. They would toil and fight until they filled
nameless graves. He, too, would find a nameless grave, he thought, but
he would not lie in it