r the work of railroad construction on the
extension of the G. T. & C. line began to be pressed forward with eager
alacrity. Indeed, it had languished only when the ground was deeply
covered with snow or locked so fast in the immobile freeze that steel and
iron could not penetrate it. The work had been persistently pushed at
practicable intervals, whenever the labor could be constrained to it.
Possibly this urgency had no ill results except in one or two individual
cases. The sons of toil are indurated to hardship, and most of the gang
were brawny Irish ditchers. Jubal Clenk, already outworn with age and ill
nourished throughout a meagre life, unaccustomed, too, to exposure to the
elements (for the industry of moonshining is a sheltered and well-warmed
business), was the only notable collapse. He began by querulously
demanding of anyone who would listen to him what he himself could mean by
having an "out-dacious pain" under his shoulder-blade. "I feel like I hev
been knifed, that's whut!" he would declare. This symptom was presently
succeeded by a "misery in his breast-bone," and a racking cough seemed
likely to shake to pieces his old skeleton, growing daily more
perceptible under his dry, shrivelled skin. A fever shortly set in, but
it proved of scanty interest to the local physician, when called by the
boss of the construction gang to look in upon him, in one of the rickety
shacks which housed the force of laborers, and which was his temporary
home.

"There's no show for him," the doctor laconically remarked. "Lungs,
heart, throat, all have got into the game. You had better get rid of
him--he will never be of any use again."

"Throw him over the bluff, eh?" the jolly, portly boss asked with a
twinkling eye. "We ain't much on transportation yet."

"Well, it's no great matter. He'll provide his own transportation before
long;" and the physician stepped into his buggy with an air of finality.

The old man had, however, unsuspected reserves of vitality. He crept out
into the sunshine again, basking in the vernal warmth with a sense of
luxury, and entering into the gossip of the ditchers with an unwonted
mental activity and garrulity.

One day--one signal day--as he sat clumped up on a pile of timber
destined for railroad ties, his arms hugging his knees, his eyes
feverishly bright and hollow, a personal interest in his condition was
developed in the minds of his old pals and fellow-laborers, Drann and
Holvey, albeit