odds and ends
left over after the mountains were built. Mike swears they drove through
limestone, sandstone, porphyry, fire-clay, chert, mica-schist, and _mud_
digging that tunnel; which the same, if true, doesn't promise very well
for the foundations of our dam."

"But the plans call for bed-rock under the masonry," Ballard objected.

"Oh, yes; and we have it--apparently. But some nights, when I've lain
awake listening to the peculiar hollow roar of the water pounding
through that tunnel, I've wondered if Doylan's streak of mud mightn't
under-lie our bed-rock."

Ballard's smile was good-naturedly tolerant.

"You'd be a better engineer, if you were not a musician, Loudon. You
have too much imagination. Is that the colonel's country house up yonder
in the middle of our reservoir-that-is-to-be?"

"It is."

Ballard focussed his field-glass upon the tree-dotted knoll a mile away
in the centre of the upper valley. It was an ideal building site for the
spectacular purpose. On all sides the knoll sloped gently to the valley
level; and the river, a placid vale-land stream in this upper reach,
encircled three sides of the little hill. Among the trees, and
distinguishable from them only by its right lines and gable angles,
stood a noble house, built, as it seemed, of great tree-trunks with the
bark on.

Ballard could imagine the inspiring outlook from the brown-pillared
Greek portico facing westward; the majestic sweep of the enclosing
hills, bare and with their rocky crowns worn into a thousand fantastic
shapes; the uplift of the silent, snow-capped mountains to right and
left; the vista of the broad, outer valley opening through the gap where
the dam was building.

"The colonel certainly had an eye for the picturesque when he pitched
upon that knoll for his building-site," was his comment. "How does he
get the water up there to make all that greenery?"

"Pumps it, bless your heart! What few modern improvements you won't find
installed at Castle 'Cadia aren't worth mentioning. And, by the way,
there is another grouch--we're due to drown his power-pumping and
electric plant at the portal of the upper canyon under twenty feet of
our lake. More bad blood, and a lot more damages."

"Oh, damn!" said Ballard; and he meant the imprecation, and not the pile
of masonry which his predecessors had heaped up in the rocky chasm at
his feet.

Bromley chuckled. "That is what the colonel is apt to say when you
mention the Arcadia