a lady?'
the storekeeper said. 'Guess I've just got it.' And he planked down a
salmon-fed reistit ham and this bottle of ancient candy, with the dead
flies thrown in. Still, one can't help admiring them for the way they've
held on, growing stuff they cannot sell, building stores where few men
come to buy, and piling up low-grade ore that won't pay its pack-freight
to the smelter. Also I've seen work that three men spent a year over which
a hydraulic monitor would have done in a few days, while the rocks seem
bursting with riches and the valleys with fertility; but they can get
neither produce out nor mining plant in. Their greatest hero now is a
certain enterprising director, and they'd decline an angel's visit at any
time for that of a railroad builder."

"I sometimes wish I had been born a man, with work of that kind to do,"
said Grace, with a fire in her eyes. "We hear of the old romance and lost
chivalry, but there was never more than in these modern days, only it has
changed its guise. If we haven't the knight in armor or the roystering
swashbuckler, we have the man with the axe and drill; and is it not a task
for heroes to drive the level steel road through these tremendous
mountains? You are smiling, Mr. Calvert. I read the papers--Colonial and
British, all I can come across--and I know that some day England will need
all her colonies. You cannot deny that this is a sensible question: Which
is the better for an English gentleman, to use all the strength and valor
that is entrusted him--we are taught there will be a reckoning when he
must account for them--subduing savage Nature, that the hungry may eat
cheaper bread, or lounging about a racecourse, shooting driven
pheasants--I know it needs high skill--or wasting precious hours in the
reeking smoke-room of his club? If I had a brother I should sooner see him
working as a C. P. R. track-shoveler."

"Grace has strong opinions," said the old lady. "I think she is right, in
a measure."

Calvert bowed. "It's in the Carrington blood. Miss Grace, I once heard one
of your father's old comrades say that the Colonel could keep no officers
because he wore them out, and he might have ended as General but that he
reversed the positions and wanted to instruct the War Office. However, you
mustn't be too hard on the poor loungers; they eat the things the other
fellows grow, and some of them subscribe the money to make the new
railroads go--they don't always get dividends on i