, with
leathery face, was loading some grade stakes on a handcar.

MacMurtrey, tall, lanky and irascible, shouted at the red-haired man
from a little distance up the line.

"Hey, O'Toole!"

The red-haired man paid no attention.

"_O'Toole!_" It came in a bellow from the road boss. "You, there,
O'Toole, you wooden-headed mud-picker, are you deaf!"

Sammy Durgan looked up to get a line on the disturbance--and caught his
breath.

"By glory!" whispered Sammy Durgan to himself. "I was near
forgetting--'tis me he's yelling at."

"O'Too----"

"Yes, sir!" shouted Sammy Durgan hurriedly.

"Oh, you woke up, have you?" shrilled MacMurtrey. "Well, when you've
got those stakes loaded, take 'em down the grade and leave 'em by the
old spur. And take it easy on the grade, and mind your brakes going
down--understand?"

"Yes, sir," said Sammy Durgan.

Sammy Durgan finished loading his handcar, and, hopping aboard, started
to pump it along. At the brow of the grade he passed the oil-tank car,
and nodded sympathetically at a round-faced, tow-headed Swede who was
snatching a surreptitious drag at his pipe in the lee of the car.

Like one other memorable morning in Sammy Durgan's career, it was
sultry and warm with that same leisurely feeling in the air. Sammy
Durgan and his handcar slid down the grade--for about an eighth of a
mile--rounded a curve that hid Sammy Durgan and the construction camp
one from the other, continued on for another hundred yards--and came to
a stop.

Sammy Durgan got off. On the canyon side there was perhaps room for an
agile mountain goat to stretch its legs without falling off; but on the
other side, if a man squeezed in tight enough and curled his legs Turk
fashion, the rock wall made a fairly comfortable backrest.

"'Twas easy, he said, to take it on the grade," said Sammy Durgan
reminiscently. "And why not?"

Sammy Durgan composed himself against the rock wall, and produced his
black cutty.

"'Tis a better job than track-walking," said Sammy Durgan judicially,
"though more arduous."

Sammy Durgan smoked on.

"But some day," said Sammy Durgan momentously, "I'll have a better one.
I will that! It's a long time in coming mabbe, but it'll come. Once
in every man's life a chance comes to him. 'Tis patience that counts,
that and rising to the emergency that proves the kind of a man you are,
as some day I'll prove to Maria, and Regan, and the rest of 'em."

Sammy Durgan smoked on