ficulties."

Clay was looking at the other closely, as though he was trying to find
something back of what he was saying, but as his glance seemed only to
embarrass King he smiled freely again in assent, and gave him his full
attention.

"There are no men to-day, Miss Langham," King exclaimed, suddenly,
turning toward her, "to my mind, who lead as picturesque lives as do
civil engineers. And there are no men whose work is as little
appreciated."

"Really?" said Miss Langham, encouragingly.

"Now those men I met," continued King, settling himself with his side
to the table, "were all young fellows of thirty or thereabouts, but
they were leading the lives of pioneers and martyrs--at least that's
what I'd call it. They were marching through an almost unknown part of
Mexico, fighting Nature at every step and carrying civilization with
them. They were doing better work than soldiers, because soldiers
destroy things, and these chaps were creating, and making the way
straight. They had no banners either, nor brass bands. They fought
mountains and rivers, and they were attacked on every side by fever and
the lack of food and severe exposure. They had to sit down around a
camp-fire at night and calculate whether they were to tunnel a
mountain, or turn the bed of a river or bridge it. And they knew all
the time that whatever they decided to do out there in the wilderness
meant thousands of dollars to the stockholders somewhere up in God's
country, who would some day hold them to account for them. They
dragged their chains through miles and miles of jungle, and over flat
alkali beds and cactus, and they reared bridges across roaring canons.
We know nothing about them and we care less. When their work is done
we ride over the road in an observation-car and look down thousands and
thousands of feet into the depths they have bridged, and we never give
them a thought. They are the bravest soldiers of the present day, and
they are the least recognized. I have forgotten their names, and you
never heard them. But it seems to me the civil engineer, for all that,
is the chief civilizer of our century."

Miss Langham was looking ahead of her with her eyes half-closed, as
though she were going over in her mind the situation King had described.

"I never thought of that," she said. "It sounds very fine. As you say,
the reward is so inglorious. But that is what makes it fine."

The cowboy was looking down at the table and