y made
any easier for him."

Gordon grinned, though he realized that the trail his companion had
set out upon was very steep indeed. He had secured the dam-building
contract, which was not astonishing, since nobody else appeared
anxious to undertake it, and he had already acquired a certain
proficiency with the axe and drill. There is as yet very little
specialization in that land, which is in many respects fortunate for
those who live in it, and the small rancher cheerfully undertakes any
kind of primitive engineering that seems likely to provide him with a
few dollars, from building timber bridges to blasting waggon roads out
of the hardest rock. What is more, he usually makes a success of it.
In Nasmyth's case, however, the rise of water had made his task almost
insuperably difficult, and it had already left a certain mark on him.
Gordon, who was, after all, a doctor, naturally noticed this as he
watched him.

Nasmyth was very lean now, but he was also hard and muscular, and the
old blue shirt, which hung open at the neck, and torn duck trousers,
which clung about him still wet with river-water, accentuated the wiry
suppleness of his frame; but it was in his face that Gordon noticed
the greatest change. The good-humoured, tolerant indifference he
remembered had melted out of it, the lips seemed set more firmly, and
the eyes were resolute and keen. Nasmyth, so Gordon noticed, had grown
since he first took up his duties as Waynefleet's hired hand. Still,
though it was less apparent, the stamp of refinement and what Gordon
called, for want of a better term, "sensibility," clung to him, and it
seemed to the trained observer that the qualities it suggested might
yet handicap his comrade in a country where the struggle with
primitive forces chiefly demands from man an unreasoning animal
courage. In that land the small contractor and Bush-rancher must bear
the brunt on his body every day, toiling waist-deep in icy waters, or
gripping the drill with bleeding hands, while each fresh misfortune
that follows flood and frost is met with a further strain on weary
muscles and sterner resolution. It is a fight that is usually hardest
for the man who thinks, and in which the one thing that counts is the
brutal, bulldog valour that takes hold and holds on in spite of each
crushing blow.

"This high water," said Gordon, "has kept you back considerably."

"It has," Nasmyth replied with emphasis. "It has cost me more money
that I