. Gertrude objected. A foggy haze
hung over the valley.

"Come along," urged Harrison; "the air will give you an appetite."

After some remonstrating she put on her heavy coat, and carrying
umbrellas the four started under the conductor's guidance across to the
dike. They picked their steps along curving tracks, between material
piles and through the debris of the night. On the dike they spent some
time looking at the gaps and listening to explanations of how the river
worked to undermine and how it had been checked. Watchers hooded in
yellow stickers patrolled the narrow jetties or, motionless, studied
the eddies boiling at their feet.

Returning, the party walked around the edge of the camp where cooks
were busy about steaming kettles. Under long, open tents wearied men
lying on scattered hay slept after the hardship of the night. In the
drizzling haze half a dozen men, assistants to the engineer--rough
looking but strong-featured and quick-eyed--sat with buckets of
steaming coffee about a huge campfire. Four men bearing a litter came
down the path. Doctor Lanning halted them. A laborer had been pinched
during the night between loads of piling projecting over the ends of
flat cars and they told the doctor his chest was hurt. A soiled
neckcloth covered his face but his stertorous breathing could be heard,
and Gertrude Brock begged the doctor to go to the camp with the injured
man and see whether something could not be done to relieve him until
the company surgeon arrived. The doctor, with O'Brien, turned back.
Gertrude, depressed by the incident, followed Louise and Allen Harrison
along the path which wound round a clump of willows flanking the
campfire.

On the sloping bank below the trees and a little out of the wind a man
on a mattress of willows lay stretched asleep. He was clad in leather,
mud-stained and wrinkled, and the big brown boots that cased his feet
were strapped tightly above his knees. An arm, outstretched, supported
his head, hidden under a soft gray hat. Like the thick gloves that
covered his clasped hands, his hat and the handkerchief knotted about
his neck were soaked by the rain, falling quietly and trickling down
the furrows of his leather coat. But his attitude was one of
exhaustion, and trifles of discomfort were lost in his deep respiration.

"Oh!" exclaimed Gertrude Brock under her breath, "look at that poor
fellow asleep in the rain. Allen?"

Allen Harrison, ahead, was