s fireworks--one hundred and twenty-five barrels of powder and
four fifty-pound cases of dynamite--and if you can't walk that far,
Thorne, we'll take you up on a sledge. Mustn't allow you to miss it!"

"Sorry, but I'll have to, Mac. I'm going south with the mail. That's why
I want you with Howland and me this morning. It will be up to you to get
him acquainted with every detail in camp."

"Bully!" exclaimed the little superintendent, rubbing his hands with
brisk enthusiasm. "Greggy and Thorne have done some remarkable things,
Mr. Howland. You'll open your eyes when you see 'em! Talk about building
railroads! We've got 'em all beat a thousand ways--tearing through
forests, swamps and those blooming ridge-mountains--and here we are
pretty near up at the end of the earth. The new Trans-continental isn't
in it with us! The--"

"Ring off, Mac!" exclaimed Thorne; and Howland found himself laughing
down into the red, freckled face of the superintendent. He liked this
man immensely from the first.

"He's a bunch of live wires, double-charged all the time," said Thorne
in a low voice as MacDonald went out ahead of them. "Always like
that--happy as a boy most of the time, loved by the men, but the very
devil himself when he's riled. Don't know what this camp would do
without him."

This same thought occurred to Howland a dozen times during the next two
hours. MacDonald seemed to be the life and law of the camp, and he
wondered more and more at Thorne's demeanor. The camp chiefs and gang
foremen whom they met seemed to stand in a certain awe of the senior
engineer, but it was at the little red-headed Scotchman's cheery words
that their eyes lighted with enthusiasm. This was not like the old
Thorne, who had been the eye, the ear and the tongue of the company's
greatest engineering works for a decade past, and whose boundless
enthusiasm and love of work had been the largest factors in the winning
of fame that was more than national. He began to note that there was a
strange nervousness about Thorne when they were among the men, an uneasy
alertness in his eyes, as though he were looking for some particular
face among those they encountered. MacDonald's shrewd eyes observed his
perplexity, and once he took an opportunity to whisper:

"I guess it's about time for Thorne to get back into civilization.
There's something bad in his system. Weston told me yesterday that his
injuries are coming along finely. I don't understand it."