tory Point we
will say, 'Done!'"

The magic of the wire was to carry that single message abroad over the
face of the land.

The President of the United States was to be congratulated, as were the
officers of the army, and the engineers of the work. San Francisco
had arranged a monster celebration marked by the booming of cannon and
enthusiastic parades. Free railroad tickets into Sacramento were to
fill that city with jubilant crowds. At Omaha cannons were to be fired,
business abandoned, and the whole city given over to festivity. Chicago
was to see a great parade and decoration. In New York a hundred guns
were to boom out the tidings. Trinity Church was to have special
services, and the famous chimes were to play "Old Hundred." In
Philadelphia a ringing of the Liberty Bell in Independence Hall would
initiate a celebration. And so it would be in all prominent cities of
the Union.

Neale was at Promontory Point that summer day. He stood aloof from the
crowd, on a little bank, watching with shining eyes.

To him the scene was great, beautiful, final.

Only a few hundreds of that vast army of laborers were present at the
meeting of the rails, but enough were there to represent the whole.
Neale's glances were swift and gathering. His comrades, Pat and
McDermott, sat near, exchanging lights for their pipes. They seemed
reposeful, and for them the matter was ended. Broken hulks of toilers
of the rails! Neither would labor any more. A burly Negro, with crinkly,
bullet-shaped head, leaned against a post; a brawny spiker, naked to the
waist, his wonderful shoulders and arms brown, shiny, knotted, scarred,
stood near, sledge in hand; a group of Irishmen, red-and blue-shirted,
puffed their black pipes and argued; swarthy, sloe-eyed Mexicans, with
huge sombreros on their knees, lolled in the shade of a tree, talking
low in their mellow tones and fingering cigarettes; Chinamen, with long
pig-tails and foreign dress, added strangeness and colorful contrast.

Neale heard the low murmur of voices of the crowd, and the slow puffing
of the two engines, head on, only a few yards apart, so strikingly
different in shape. Then followed the pounding of hoofs and tread of
many feet, the clang of iron as the last rail went down. How clear,
sweet, spanging the hammer blows! And there was the old sighing sweep of
the wind. Then came a gun-shot, the snort of a horse, a loud laugh.

Neale heard all with sensitive, recording ears.

"Mac,