who are born every now and then
with the gift of interpreting railway schedules would have had no great
difficulty in locating "Thorlakson" in the main-line timetable of the
Canadian Lake Shores Railway. It takes the form of a little
dagger-mark which, pursued into the fine print of the "Explanatory,"
yields the information that "Thorlakson" is a flag-station.

Magnus Thorlakson himself, Icelander, must be credited with being one
of the oldest and most conscientious section foremen on the division.
He, his men, his wife, his children and everything that was his abode
in a log shanty on a rise of ground close to the track. The rest of
the place consisted of a long siding, a short wooden platform, a tall
new standard enclosed water-tank and a little whitewashed shed where
the handcar and tools were stored. A creek here slipped out of the
woods to find fault with a stone culvert ere it flowed beneath the
track and resought silence among the encircling spruce trees.

It was a lonesome, insignificant place with nothing to indicate its
selection as a bobbin for threads of destiny. The sun was just coming
into the sky above the low-lying hills to the east when the President's
special steamed into the siding. From the group, clustered about the
tool-shed and awaiting its arrival, a broad-shouldered young man in the
flannel shirt and legging boots of a railway engineer separated himself
and hurried forward. He waved his hand as he recognized Wade's sturdy
figure and laughed to hear the magnate's hearty greeting of surprise,
his profane enquiry as to what in Gehenna Philip Kendrick was doing
away up here in the woods.

The mere sound of that big vibrant bass voice, the mere vitality of the
magnate's presence was stimulating. Here was a two-fisted,
hard-headed, straight-spoken man's man who had fought his way to the
top by refusing pointblank to stay at the bottom. As Phil stood
renewing acquaintance he realized more fully why his aunt had always
had such supreme confidence in this old friend of her girlhood.

"I've been working for the C.L.S. for nearly two weeks now," he
explained. "I'm chainman with the Rutland party, out from North Bay on
a topographical survey. We're taking a new mileage and mapping the
right-of-way. Our van's on the second siding above here."

This unexpected "vacation" had come about quite simply. On arrival in
North Bay to go fishing with Billy Thorpe he had found that wide-awake
young arc