rapids. It was past mid afternoon when they ran a level
in a spot of surpassing grandeur. A rock slide had sent a great heap of
stone into the river. Close beside this they set the transit. Forward
the river swept smoothly round a curve. Back, the two looked on a
magnificent series of flying buttresses of serrated granite, their bases
guarding the river, their tops remotely supporting the heavens. The
buttresses nearest the rock heap and on opposite sides of the river were
not two rods apart.

They ran the levels carefully and then looked at each other in silence.
Then they made another reading and again looked at each other. Then they
packed the transit into its rubber bag, sat down on the rock heap and
gazed at the marching, impregnable line of buttresses.

"It will be even higher than the Green Mountain and a hundred times
more difficult to build," said Charlie, softly.

"She'll be a wonder, won't she!" exclaimed Jim. "The Makon dam. It will
be the highest in the world."

"Granite and concrete! Some beauty that! Eternal as the hills!" said
Charlie. "We will make camp and finish the map here."

They lay long, looking at the stars that night. "Some day," said Jim,
"there will be a two hundred feet width of concrete wall right where we
are lying. Doesn't it make you feel a little hollow in your stomach to
think that you and I have decreed where it shall be?"

"Yes," said Charlie. "It's a good spot, Manning. I hope I get a chance
to lay out the road down here. They will have to blast it out of the
solid granite. It will eat money up to make it."

"Let me in on it, won't you," pleaded Jim.

"Well, slightly!" exclaimed Charlie. "Now for a good night's sleep. We
ought to be out in three days. That will make ten days in all, just what
I planned."

Jim hardly knew Charlie the next day. No college freshman on his first
holiday ever acted more outrageously. He sang ancient college songs that
reverberated in the canyon like yells on a football field. He stood
solemnly on his head on the top of rock pinnacles. He crowned himself
and Jim with wreaths made of water cress that he found on a tiny sandy
beach. When they were obliged to take to the water he pretended that he
was an alligator and made uncouth sounds and lashed the water with the
grub bag in lieu of a tail.

Late in the afternoon, while they were swimming through a whirlpool, he
insisted on giving Jim a lecture on the gentle art of bee-hunting as he
had seen