edly and jeering. The big
foreman, whose scepter of authority was commonly a pick-handle for the
belaboring of offenders, was not loved.

"Kick-a da shin--kick-a da shin--he like-a da nigger-mans," suggested
one of the Italians, but there was no need. Being safely out of range of
the catapult fists, the foreman stayed there.

"Take your track gang and be damned to you!" he snarled.

Adair made a forward step and stood over him.

"Are you quite convinced that I am the better man?" he asked very
gently.

"It's a trick!" growled the Wicklow man savagely. "I could get onto it
in another whirl or two."

"Get up," said the gentle voice. "You'll never have a better chance to
learn the trick." But the foreman had the saving grace to shun
anti-climaxes.

"G'wan! Take the men, I say; all of 'em, if you like."

"Thanks," said Adair pleasantly. "We'll do it, and we'll take you, as
well--to answer for their good behavior. Let me help you up," and he
stooped and snapped the big one to his feet as a man would collar a
reluctant boy.

"Great judgment!" gasped the foreman. "Say, Mister
Cock-o'-the-walk--where do you hide all that muscle?" And without
waiting for an answer he piled a dozen of his men upon the engine and
followed them, still muttering.

It was a partly surfaced ten miles over which the special train
thundered for the third time since dawn-breaking, and Gallagher took the
last wheel-turn out of the 956. None the less, the sun was reddening the
western mountains when the Italians took ground at the mysterious gap.
The rails were found in the stream, as Adair had predicted, and it was a
work of minutes only to snake them up the embankment and to spike them
lightly into place. But when Adair, for the healing of wounds, had
thrust a bank-note into the hand of the Wicklow man, and the special was
once more on its unhindered way westward, the sun had fairly topped the
eastern range, and Johnson, the porter of the "01," was shouting across
the rocketing tender that breakfast was served.

The young man in the London-cut clothes might have climbed back to the
car over the coal; or Gallagher would have stopped for him. But he
elected to stay in the cab, and he was still there, hanging from the
open window on Jackson's side, when the one-car special woke the echoes
with its whistle, clattered in over the switches at Horse Creek, and
came to a stand opposite the MacMorroghs' commissary.

It was Brian MacMorrogh who cam