began to mend.

Then came his siege with the rails. That was labor which made carrying
ties seem light. He toiled on, sweating thin, wearing hard, growing
clearer of mind. As pain subsided, and weariness of body no longer
dominated him, slowly thought and feeling returned until that morning
dawned when, like a flash of lightning illuminating his soul, the
profound and exalted emotion again possessed him. Soon he came to divine
that the agony of toil and his victory over weak flesh had added to his
strange happiness. Hour after hour he bent his back and plodded beside
his comrades, doing his share, burdened as they were, silent, watchful,
listening, dreaming, keen to note the progress of the road, yet deep in
his own intense abstraction. He seemed to have two minds. He saw every
rod of the ten miles of track laid every day, knew, as only an engineer
could know, the wonder of such progress; and, likewise, always in his
sight, in his mind, shone a face, red-lipped, soulful, lovely like a
saint's, with mournful violet eyes, star-sweet in innocence. Life had
given Allie Lee back to him--to his love and his memory; and all that
could happen to him now must be good. At first he had asked for nothing,
so grateful was he to fate, but now he prayed for hours and days and
nights to remember.

The day came when Neale graduated into the class of spikers. This
division of labor to him had always represented the finest spirit of the
building. The drivers--the spikers--the men who nailed the rails--who
riveted the last links--these brawny, half-naked wielders of the
sledges, bronzed as Indians, seemed to embody both the romance and the
achievement. Neale experienced a subtle perception with the first touch
and lift and swing of the great hammer. And there seemed born in him a
genius for the stroke. He had a free, easy swing, with tremendous power.
He could drive so fast that his comrade on the opposite rail, and the
carriers and layers, could not keep up with him. Moments of rest seemed
earned. During these he would gaze with glinting eyes back at the gangs
and the trains, at the smoke, dust, and movement; and beyond toward the
east.

One day he drove spikes for hours, with the gangs in uninterrupted labor
around him, while back a mile along the road the troopers fought the
Sioux; and all this time, when any moment he might be ordered to drop
his sledge for a rifle, he listened to the voice in his memory and saw
the face.

Another