mendous
wall of rock, and about her stood groups of hard-handed men, who had
driven the heading with strenuous, insistent toil. She knew what the
work had cost them, and could understand the look in their steady
eyes. They had faced the river in the depths of the tremendous rift,
borne with the icy winter, and patiently grappled with obstacle after
obstacle. Their money had not sufficed to purchase them costly
machines. They had pitted steadfast courage and hardened muscle
against the vast primeval forces of untrammelled Nature. Laura felt
deeply stirred as she glanced at them. They were simple men, but they
had faced and beaten roaring flood and stinging frost, caring little
for the hazard to life or limb as they played their part in that
tremendous struggle with axe and drill.

Suddenly Laura became conscious that Nasmyth, who held up a little box
from which trailed a couple of wires, was speaking.

"Our last dollars bought that powder. Wish us good luck," he said.

Laura stretched out her hands for the box, and standing upon the rock
shelf, with one shoe burst and her skirt badly rent, raised her voice
as she had done in that spot once before.

"Boys," she said, "you have stood fast against very heavy odds. May
all that you can wish for--orchards, oat-fields, wheat, and cattle--be
yours. The prosperity of this country is founded on such efforts as
you have made."

With a little smile in her eyes, she fitted in the firing-plug, and in
another moment a streak of flame that seemed to expand into a
bewildering brilliancy flashed through the spray of the fall. The
flash of light was lost in rolling smoke and a tremendous eruption of
flying rock that rang with deafening detonations against the side of
the canyon. The smoke rolled higher, and still great shattered
fragments came whirling out of it, striking boulder and shingle with a
heavy crash, until the roar of the liberated river rose in tumultuous
clamour and drowned all other sound.

A great foaming wave swept forward, washing high along the bank, and
poured seething down the rapid. Shingle and boulder were lost in it.
It drove on tumultuously, and a mad turgid flood came on behind. Then
it slowly fell away again, and a man, clambering out, in peril of
being swept away, beneath the dripping rock, flung up a hand. His
voice rang harsh and exultant through the sinking roar of the beaten
river.

"We've cut the last ledge clean away," he said.

A great shout we