ch. At first it moves at a brisk trot, uphill and downhill, and it
goes faster and faster as its strength begins to flag. And when at last
it is thoroughly out of breath and ready to drop, it breaks into an easy
gallop.

This was not the work he had once dreamed of finding. Now, as
before, his hunger for eternal things seemed ever at the side of his
accomplishment, asking continually: Whither? Why? and What then?

But by degrees the difficulties had multiplied and mounted, till at last
his whole mind was taken up by the one thought--to put it through. Good
or bad in itself--he must make a success of it. He had undertaken it,
and he must see it through. He must not be beaten.

And so he fought on. It was merely a trial of strength; a fight with
material difficulties. Aye, but was that all it was? Were there not
times when he felt himself struggling with something greater, something
worse? A new motive force seemed to have come into his life--misfortune.
A power outside his own will had begun to play tricks with him.

Your calculations may be sound, correct in every detail, and yet things
may go altogether wrong.

Who could include in his calculations the chance that a perfectly sober
engineer will get drunk one day and give orders so crazy that it costs
tens of thousands to repair the damage? Who could foresee that against
all probability a big vein of water would be tapped in tunnelling, and
would burst out, flooding the workings and overwhelming the workmen--so
that the next day a train of unpainted deal coffins goes winding out
over the frozen lakes?

More than once there had been remarks and questions in the newspapers:
"Another disaster at the Besna Falls. Who is to blame?"

It was because he himself was away on a business journey and Falkman had
neglected to take elementary precautions that the big rock-fall
occurred in the tunnel, killing four men, and destroying the new Belgian
rock-drill, that had cost a good hundred thousand, before it had begun
to work. This sort of thing was not faulty calculation--it was malicious
fate.

"Come up, boy! We must get there to-night. The flood mustn't have a
chance this year to lay the blame on me because I wasn't on the spot."

And then, to cap the other misfortunes, his chief contractor for
material had gone bankrupt, and now prices had risen far above the rates
he had allowed for--adding fresh thousands to the extra expenditure.

But he would put the thing through,