se your back pay, or
of firing you, either."

"You'll probably do both--unless we can get together," asserted Coffee.

"Well, can't we get together?"

"That remains to be seen," was the enigmatic reply.

"Ill need you both," went on Neale, thoughtfully. "We've a big job.
We've got to put a force of men on the piers while we're building the
trestle... Maybe I'll fall down myself. Heavens! I've made blunders
myself. I can't condemn you fellows. I'm willing to call off all talk
about past performances and begin over again."

Neale felt that this proposition should have put another light on
the question, that it should have been received appreciatively if not
enthusiastically. But he was somewhat taken aback by the fact that it
was not.

"Ahem! Well, we can talk it over to-morrow," yawned Coffee.

Neale made no more overtures, busied himself with his notes for an hour,
and then sought his cot.

Next morning, bright and early, Neale went down to the river to make his
close inspection of what had been done toward building Number Ten. From
Colohan he ascertained the number of shafts and coffer-dams sunk; from
the masons he learned the amount of stone cut to patterns. And he was
not only amazed and astounded, but overwhelmed, and incensed beyond
expression. The labor had been prodigious. Hundreds of tons of material
had been sunk there; and that meant that hundreds of thousands of
dollars also had been sunk.

Upon investigation Neale found that, although many cribbings had been
sunk for the piers, they had never been put deep enough. And there were
coffer-dams that did not dam at all--useless, senseless wastes of time
and material, not to say wages. His plans called for fifty thirty-foot
piles driven to bedrock, which, according to the excavations he had had
made at the time of survey, was forty feet below the surface. Not a pile
had been driven! There had been no solid base for any of the cribbings!
No foundations for the piers!

At the discovery the blood burned hot in Neale's face and neck.

"No blunder! No incompetence! No misreading of my plans! But a rotten,
deliberate deal!... Work done over and over again! Oh, I see it all now!
General Lodge knew it without ever coming here. The same old story! That
black stain--that dishonor on the great work! ... Graft! Graft!"

He clambered out of the wet and muddy hole and up the bank. Then he saw
Blake sauntering across the flat toward him. Neale sat down abruptly to