you were willing to
admit a moment ago."

"You dignify it too much. I believe I called him an ass, and he called
me an idiot. There was no bloodshed."

"You are jesting again. You always jest when I want to be serious."

"I might retort that I learned the trick of it from you--in the blessed
days that are now a part of another existence."

"Oh!" she said; and there was so much more of distress than of
impatience in the little outcry that he was mollified at once.

"I'm going to crank the engines and send you home," he asseverated. "I'm
not fit to talk to you to-day." And he started the engines of the
motor-car.

She put a dainty foot on the clutch-pedal. "You'll come up and see me?"
she asked; adding: "Some time when you are fit?"

"I'll come when I am needed; yes."

He walked beside the slowly moving car as she sent it creeping down the
mesa hill on the brakes. At the hill-bottom turn, where the camp street
ended and the roundabout road led off to the temporary bridge, she
stopped the car. The towering wall of the great dam, with its dotting of
workmen silhouetted black against the blue of the Colorado sky, rose
high on the left. She let her gaze climb to the summit of the huge dike.

"You are nearly through?" she asked.

"Yes. Two other weeks, with no bad luck, will see us ready to turn on
the water."

She was looking straight ahead again.

"You know what that means to us at Castle 'Cadia?--but of course you
do."

"I know I'd rather be a 'mucker' with a pick and shovel out yonder in
the ditch than to be the boss here when the spillway gates are closed at
the head of the cut-off tunnel. And that is the pure truth."

"This time I believe you without reservation, Breckenridge--my friend."
Then: "Will Mr. Pelham come out to the formal and triumphal opening of
the Arcadian Irrigation District?"

"Oh, you can count on that--with all the trimmings. There is to be a
demonstration in force, as Major Blacklock would say; special trains
from Denver to bring the crowd, a barbecue dinner, speeches, a
land-viewing excursion over the completed portion of the railroad, and
fireworks in the evening while the band plays 'America.' You can trust
Mr. Pelham to beat the big drum and to clash the cymbals vigorously and
man-fashion at the psychological instant."

"For purely commercial reasons, of course? I could go a step further and
tell you something else that will happen. There will be a good many
transfers of the