Jim was a good player.

The dam was far from civilization and the engineers welcomed Jim,
although they treated him with the jocularity that his youth and
inexperience demanded. The novelty of his environment, the romance of
the great gray dam, built with such frightful risk and difficulty,
absorbed Jim for the first week or so. He had no thought of homesickness
until the excitement of his new work began to recede. And then, quite
unexpectedly, it descended on him like a leaden cloud.

The longing for home! The helpless, hopeless sickness of the heart for
dear familiar faces! The seeing of alien places through tear-dimmed
eyes, the answering to strange voices with an aching throat, and the
poignancy of memory! Jim's mind dwelt monotonously on the worn spot in
the library hearth rug where he and Uncle Denny had spent so many, many
hours. There was the crack in the brown teapot that his mother would not
discard because she had poured Big Jim's tea from it. There was Uncle
Denny's rich Irish voice, "Ah, Still Jim, me boy!" And there was
Pen--dear, dear Penelope, with her woman's eyes in her child's
face--with her halo of hair. Pen's "Take me with you, Still," was the
very peak of sorrow now to the boy. Jim was homesick. And he who has not
known homesickness does not know one of life's most exquisite griefs.

It seemed to Jim now that he hated the Big Country. At night in his tent
he was conscious of the giant dam lying so silent in the darkness and it
made him feel helpless and alone. By day he hid his unhappiness, he
thought. He worked doggedly and did not guess that Charlie Tuck
understood that many times he saw the designs for the wonderful bronze
gates of the sluicing tunnel over which Charlie heckled him for days,
through tear-dimmed eyes.

The camp was lighted by electricity. Jim would sit watching the lights
flare up after supper, watching the night shift on the broad top of the
dam which was as wide as a street and try to pretend that the noise and
the light and the figures belonged to 23rd street. Jim was sitting so in
the door of his tent one night after nearly a month in camp. He held his
pipe but could not smoke because of the ache in his throat. He had not
been there long when Charlie Tuck came up the trail and with a nod sat
down beside Jim.

"Let me have a light," he said. "The fellows are having a rough house
over in the office tonight. Why don't you go over?"

"I don't feel like it, somehow," replied