mind. He began to hum his favorite song. Facing westward, he saw the
black dot grow into a long train. Likewise he saw the beauty of the
red-gold sunset behind the hills. Casey gloried in the wildness of the
scene--in the meaning of his ride--particularly in his loneliness. He
seemed strangely alone there on that vast gray slope--a man and somehow
accountable for all these things. He felt more than he understood.
His long-tried nerves and courage and strength had never yielded this
wonderful buoyancy and sense of loftiness. He was Casey--Casey who had
let all the gang run for shelter from the Sioux while he had remained
for one last and final drive at a railroad spike. But the cool,
devil-may-care indifference, common to all his comrades as well as to
himself, was not the strongest factor in the Casey of to-day. Up out of
the rugged and dormant soul had burst the spirit of a race embodied
in one man. Casey was his own audience, and the light upon him was
the glory of the setting sun. A nightingale sang in his heart, and he
realized that this was his hour. Here the bloody, hard years found their
reward. Not that he had ever wanted one or thought of one, but it had
come--out of the toil, the pain, the weariness. So his nerves tingled,
his pulses beat, his veins glowed, his heart throbbed; and all the new,
sweet, young sensations of a boy wildly reveling in the success of his
first great venture, all the vague, strange, deep, complex emotions of
a man who has become conscious of what he is giving to the world--these
shook Casey by storm, and life had no more to give. He knew that,
whatever he was, whatever this incomprehensible driving spirit in him,
whatever his unknown relation to man and to duty, there had been given
him in the peril just passed, in this wonderful ride, a gift splendid
and divine.

Casey rolled on, and the train grew plain in his sight. When perhaps
several miles of track lay between him and the approaching engine, he
concluded it was time to get ready. Lifting one of the heavy ties, he
laid it in front where he could quickly shove it off with his foot.

Then he stood up. It was certain that he looked backward, but at no
particular thing--just an instinctive glance. With his foot on the tie
he steadied himself so that he could push it off and leap instantly
after.

And at that moment he remembered the little book he had found on Beauty
Stanton's breast, and which contained the letter to his friend Ne