ed among the
hills, the roar of the tortured river drowned the mingled din. Rising,
tremendous in its last revolt, its majestic diapason was deepened by
the boom of grinding rock and the detonation of boulders reduced to
powder. The draught caused by the water's passage fanned the smoke
away, and the blue vapor, curling higher, drifted past the staging, so
that Helen could only dimly see a great muddy wave foam down the canyon,
bursting here and there into gigantic upheavals of spray. She watched
it, held silent, awe-stricken, by the sound and sight.

At last Mattawa Tom appeared again, and his voice was faintly audible
through the dying clamors as he waved his hands: "Juss gorgeous. Gone
way better than the best we hoped," he hailed.

His comrades heard and answered. They were not mere hirelings toiling
for a daily wage, but men who had a stake in that region's future, and
would share its prosperity, and, had it been otherwise, they were human
still. Toiling long with stubborn patience, often in imminent peril of
life and limb; winning ground as it were by inches, and sometimes
barely holding what they had won; fulfilling their race's destiny to
subdue and people the waste places of the earth with the faith which,
when aided by modern science, is greater than the mountains'
immobility, they too rejoiced fervently over the consummation of the
struggle. Twice a roar that was scarcely articulate filled the canyon,
and then, growing into the expression of definite thought, it flung
upward their leader's name.

Helen listened, breathless, intoxicated as by wine. Julius Savine
stood upright with no trace of weakness in his attitude. Then suddenly
he seemed to shrink together, and, with the power gone out of him,
caught at the rails as he turned to his daughter.

"We have won! It is Geoffrey's doing, and my last task is done," he
spoke in a voice that sounded faint and far-away. "Fast horses and
bold riders I can trust you, too, are waiting. Tell him!"

Helen noticed a strange wistfulness in her father's glance, but she
asked no question and turned to Thomas Savine. "I leave him in your
charge. I will go," she said.

That afternoon passed very slowly for Geoffrey. He lay near a window,
which he insisted should be opened, glancing alternately at his watch
and the trail that wound down the hillside as the minutes crept by. He
was hardly civil to the doctor, and almost abrupt with Mrs. Savine,
who, knowing