statement
which Giovanni Pelezzo made when he returned to camp one day and
declared that while seated in the doorway of the operating room of the
hospital he had turned in time to see Dr. Harpe take five dollars and
some small change from the pocket of his cousin Antonio Pelezzo, whom
she had etherized for a minor operation.

Although Antonio turned his empty pockets inside out to verify
Giovanni's stoutly reiterated assertion, the camp ridiculed their story
and none laughed more heartily at the absurdity of the tale than Dr.
Harpe herself. When she declared that it was only one illustration of
the lengths to which ignorant and suspicious foreigners would go, her
listeners agreed that she must indeed have much with which to contend in
practising her profession among such a class of people as were employed
upon the project.

The only person who did not laugh, beside the countrymen of the two
Italians, was Dan Treu. He made no comment when he heard the tale, but
he sat for a long time on the corner of the White Elephant's billiard
table, holding a cigarette which he forgot to smoke.

XXI

TURNING A CORNER

Andy P. Symes was much occupied with his own thoughts, he was not
sleeping well and all food tasted much alike, while the adulation of his
fellow-townsmen did not afford him the usual pleasure. These symptoms
are most frequently associated with lack of funds, and in this respect
Mr. Symes's case was not a peculiar one, the fact being that the total
of the month's payroll exceeded the amount in the treasury--with no
relief in sight--interest in the great Symes Irrigation Project having
seemed suddenly to lag in financial circles.

"Maybe I imagine it," Mudge, the promoter, had written, "but it looks to
me as though Capital was giving us the frosty mitt. They won't even
listen. I can't raise a dollar among the stockholders or sell a bond.
Could anybody have been knocking the proposition?"

Symes had written back--

"Ridiculous! Who would knock? I have no enemies of sufficient importance
to hurt me, and particularly back there. Do your utmost, for the
situation is growing critical here--desperate, in fact."

And desperate was the word when Symes contemplated going into his own
pocket for money to make up the deficit--money which he had told himself
he would salt away against that rainy day with which he had become all
too familiar.

Symes's private bank account had grown to quite a respectable sum sin