all my influence to have the Reclamation Act
repealed."

As the old Senator had finished half the men in the room had risen to
their feet, angrily denying any thought of repudiation.

Now, after tapping his desk thoughtfully, the Secretary looked at Jim.

"Mr. Manning, please take the stand."

Jim unfolded his long legs and strode up beside the Secretary's desk. He
stood there struggling for words that would not come. For five days he
had sat thinking of the three Projects that he knew. He recalled Charlie
Tuck and the two other engineers who had laid down their lives for the
dams. He pictured again the drowned and mangled workmen at the cost of
whose lives the Makon tunnel had been driven. A slow, bitter anger had
risen in him against Freet. It seemed to Jim a fearful thing that one
crooked man could taint such faithfulness and sacrifice as he had known,
could blind intelligent men to the marvel of engineering work that
marked the progress of the Reclamation Service through the arid country.
But when Jim's words came, they were futile.

"I don't know," he said in his father's casual drawl, "that I have
anything to say to the specific charges against me. The Director has
covered the ground better than I can. I have the feeling that if the
actual work we have done out west, the actual acreage we have brought to
profitable bearing won't speak to you people who have seen it, nothing
else will. The flood season is coming on, Mr. Secretary. I would suggest
that you send either me or my successor out to my dam."

The Secretary's face was quite as inscrutable as Jim's. "Mr. Manning,
why do you put so much money into roads?"

Jim's eyes fired a little. "I believe that one of the functions of
government is to build good roads. Actually, the heavy freightage that
must pass over these roads makes it essential that they be first class.
A cheap road would be expensive in time and breakage."

"How about the accusations of mismanagement?"

"I have made mistakes," replied Jim, "and some of them have been
expensive ones in lives and money. Many of our engineering problems are
entirely new and we have to solve them without precedent. The punishment
for a bad guess in engineering is always sure and hard. One can make a
bad political guess and escape."

"How about the accusation of graft?" continued the Secretary.

Jim whitened a little. He looked over the Secretary's head out at the
patch of blue sky and then back at the room