the rest of it and that tunnel. Thank God, I didn't
_have_ to go into it again. I was exultantly happy that I didn't. The
Prodigal had finished his book, and was starting another. That night he
borrowed some of my money to play solo with.

Next day I saw the foreman. I said:

"I want to go. The work up there's too hard for me."

He looked at me kindly.

"All right, sonny," says he, "don't quit. I'll put you in the gravel
pit."

So next day I found a more congenial task. There were four of us. We
threw the gravel against a screen where the finer stuff that sifted
through was used in making concrete.

The work was heart-breaking in its monotony. In the biting cold of the
morning we made a start, long before the sun peeped above the wall of
mountain.

We watched it crawl, snail-like, over the virgin sky. We panted in its
heat. We saw it drop again behind the mountain wall, leaving the sky
gorgeously barred with colour from a tawny orange glow to an ice-pale
green--a regular _pousse cafe_ of a sunset. Then when the cold and the
dark surged back, by the light of the evening star we straightened our
weary spines, and throwing aside pick and shovel hurried to supper.

Heigh-ho! what a life it was. Resting, eating, sleeping; negative
pleasures became positive ones. Life's great principle of compensation
worked on our behalf, and to lie at ease, reading an old paper, seemed
an exquisite enjoyment.

I was much troubled about the Prodigal. He complained of muscular
rheumatism, and except to crawl to meals was unable to leave his bunk.
Every day came the foreman to inquire anxiously if he was fit to go to
work, but steadily he grew worse. Yet he bore his suffering with great
spirit, and, among that nondescript crew, he was a thing of joy and
brightness, a link with that other world which was mine own. They
nicknamed him "Happy," his cheerfulness was so invincible. He played
cards on every chance, and he must have been unlucky, for he borrowed
the last of my small hoard.

One morning I woke about six, and found, pinned to my blanket, a note
from my friend.

"Dear Scotty:

"I grieve to leave you thus, but the cruel foreman insists on me
working off my ten days' board. Racked with pain as I am, there
appears to be no alternative but flight. Accordingly I fade away
once more into the unknown. Will write you general delivery, Los
Angeles. Good luck and good-bye. Yours to a cinder,