in at wance."

And Sammy Durgan started. And for a week Sammy Durgan assiduously
tramped his allotted mileage out and back to the section shanty each
day--and for a week Sammy Durgan and trouble were asunder.

Trouble? Where, from what possible source, could there be any trouble?
Not a soul for miles around the section shanty, just mountains and
track and cuts and fills, and nothing on earth for Sammy Durgan to do
but keep a paternal eye generally on the roadbed. Trouble? It even
got monotonous for Sammy Durgan himself.

"'Tis not," confided Sammy Durgan to himself one morning, after a week
of this, that found him plodding along the track some two miles east of
the section shanty, "'tis not precisely the job I'd like, for it's a
chance I'm looking for to show 'em, Maria, and Regan, and the rest of
'em, and there'll be no chance here--but temporarily it'll do. 'Tis
not much of a job, and beneath me at that, but have I not heard that
them as are faithful in little will some day be handed much? There'll
be no one to say"--he glanced carefully around him in all
directions--"that Sammy Durgan was not a good track-walker."

Sammy Durgan sat down on the edge of the embankment, extracted a black
cutty from his pocket, charged it with very black tobacco, lit it,
tamped the top of the bowl with a calloused forefinger, and from
another pocket extracted a newspaper--one of a bundle that the train
crew of No. 7 thoughtfully heaved at the section shanty door each
morning on their way up the line.

It was a warm, bright morning; one of those comfortable summer mornings
with just enough heat to lift a little simmering haze from the rails,
and just enough sun to make a man feel leisurely, so to speak. Sammy
Durgan, the cutty drawing well, wormed a comfortable and inviting
hollow in the gravel of the embankment, propped his back against an
obliging tie, and opened his paper.

"Track-walking," said Sammy Durgan, "is not much of a job, and 'tis not
what I'm looking for, but there are worse jobs."

Somebody had read the paper before Sammy Durgan, hence the sheet that
first presented itself to his view was a page of classified
advertisements. His eye roved down the column of "Situations
Vacant"--and held on one of them.

MEN WANTED for grading work at The Gap. Apply at Engineers' Office,
Big Cloud, or to T. H. MacMurtrey, foreman, at The Gap.

Sammy Durgan pursed his lips.

"There's no telling," said Sammy Durgan tho