an engineer, the thing would frighten me."

"The track will stand while they want it," Festing answered with an
impatient look. "Long before it gets shaky they'll pull it down."

"Pulling things down is a national habit. A man I met in Winnipeg bought
a nearly new hotel because he thought he could put up a better building
on the site. However, I suppose there's something to be said for his
point of view. Progress implies continuous moving on!"

"It does," said Festing. "While you moralize, the men you ought to put
to work are standing still."

Charnock got up and went off, beating his hands. He noted that there
was a hole in the mittens he had brought from home. This was annoying
because Sadie had given him the mittens. In spite of many difficulties,
they braced the posts securely before they stopped work, and when supper
was over Charnock reluctantly put on his coat. He wanted to ask Norton
something, and when he left the latter's office came back along a narrow
path above the track. After going a short distance he stopped to look
down at the half-finished frames.

The moon had not risen, but a pale glow shone above a gray peak and
the sky was clear. One could not see much in the hollow, but the snow
reflected a faint light. The timbers they had erected rose like a black
skeleton, and after glancing at them, Charnock's eyes were drawn
towards the pile of logs in the pond at the water's edge. A log pond is
generally made in a river, where the stream will carry the trunks into
the containing chains. But Festing had made his on land, using the snow
instead of the current. Charnock could not tell what had attracted his
attention, but stood motionless for a moment or two.

He heard nothing but the roar of the current and the crash of
splintering ice, and could hardly distinguish the logs. Their outline
was blurred and the dark-colored mass melted into a dusky background of
rock and water. Yet he thought something had moved beside the pond.

Then an indistinct object detached itself from the pile. It was
shapeless and he lost it next moment, but it had been visible against a
patch of snow. It was not a man's height, and, so far as he could see,
moved like an animal, but no wild beast would haunt the outskirts of
a noisy construction camp. Since he could not imagine why a man should
crawl about the logs at night, he resolved to satisfy his curiosity.

This needed caution, and he lay down and rolled himself in the snow