the mess-tent and the camp kitchen; the major was permitted and
encouraged to be loftily critical of everything; and Wingfield--but
Ballard kept the playwright carefully tethered in a sort of moral
hitching-rope, holding the end of the rope in his own hands.

Once openly committed as entertainer, the young Kentuckian did all that
could be expected of him--and more. When the visitors had surfeited
themselves on concrete-mixing and stone-laying and camp housekeeping,
the chief engineer had plank seats placed on a flat car, and the
invaders were whisked away on an impromptu and personally conducted
railway excursion to some of the nearer ditch camps.

Before leaving the headquarters, Ballard gave Fitzpatrick an Irish hint;
and when the excursionists returned from the railway jaunt, there was a
miraculous luncheon served in the big mess-tent. Garou, the
French-Canadian camp cook, had a soul above the bare necessities when
the occasion demanded; and he had Ballard's private commissary to draw
upon.

After the luncheon Ballard let his guests scatter as they pleased,
charging himself, as before, particularly with the oversight and
wardenship of Mr. Lester Wingfield. There was only one chance in a
hundred that the playwright, left to his own devices, might stumble upon
the skeleton in the camp closet. But the Kentuckian was determined to
make that one chance ineffective.

Several things came of the hour spent as Wingfield's keeper while the
others were visiting the wing dam and the quarry, the spillway, and the
cut-off tunnel, under Fitzpatrick as megaphonist. One of them was a
juster appreciation of the playwright as a man and a brother. Ballard
smiled mentally when he realised that his point of view had been that of
the elemental lover, jealous of a possible rival. Wingfield was not half
a bad sort, he admitted; a little inclined to pose, since it was his art
to epitomise a world of _poseurs_; an enthusiast in his calling; but at
bottom a workable companion and the shrewdest of observers.

In deference to the changed point of view, the Kentuckian did penance
for the preconceived prejudice and tried to make the playwright's
insulation painless. The sun shone hot on the stone yard, and there was
a jar of passable tobacco in the office adobe: would Wingfield care to
go indoors and lounge until the others came to a proper sense of the
desirability of shade and quietude on a hot afternoon?

Wingfield would, gladly. He confes