moment, but the act
spelled much to him. His hands were grimy, his face stubbly and
streaked with sweat and mud, and he had been months alone with his
too-sensitive spirit.

"You should not be here," was all he said to her. "This is no place
for you."

He shook hands with the men, mechanically--Allison quizzical, Elliott
concerned. He went back to his bridge. The water had come up a half
foot in the last few minutes some one--Fat Joe, perhaps--told him; it
was sucking greedily at the piles. And in the north the ominous murmur
had become a rhythmic roar.

Wickersham's men were driving the river. They were singing "Harrigan,
That's Me!"

CHAPTER XXII

IT HAPPENS IN BOOKS

It is said that men remember many things when death is imminent; and
for days and days something had been dying hard in Stephen O'Mara's
breast. His step was slow that afternoon when he drew apart to take up
his position alone upon a bit of higher ground, his shoulders heavy and
drooping; yet his brain was feverishly active. Recollection of many
long gone days--thoughts of many things--came darting to his mind; but
they were not thoughts of desperate, last-minute expedients which might
stave off this present crisis. For if he had believed that force alone
would win for him; if he had had faith that mere numbers could save his
construction, he would not have left Garry Devereau with his scores of
laborers, busy five miles to the south. Steve was not thinking of his
construction now; it had become a dim and remote consideration. It had
lost its importance in his scheme of things.

They came slowly at first--Wickersham's logs--thudding heavily, one by
one, into the underpinnings of the bridge, sliding free or lodging
cross-current as the case might be; then in a thicker and thicker tide
that ground and up-ended and settled with the weight of the
coffee-colored flood behind it. In the beginning the handful of men
who had put those timbers into place set themselves, doggedly, to save
their completed structure, until the man who had worked with them,
shoulder to shoulder, through the night called them with a nod back to
the bank. Obediently then they collected in a small knot behind him,
murmurous, gutterally grumbling; waiting his further word they squatted
on their haunches, staring hungrily at their chief who stood in seeming
surrender, head bowed before them.

The coming of Wickersham's men was not a thing of degrees. They p