e line file from the
cook-house and up the path.

"'Blimey!' as me friend, 'Uggins, o' Whitechapel, would say," exclaimed
Murphy. "And then some!"

Torrance only rubbed his hands.

"Did I bring enough?" enquired Conrad.

"They'll do."

"So'll ye, me lad," said Murphy behind his hand to Tressa. "Faith, but
ye've a way wid ye. Here I was hoping for a bang-up spree, wid me
houlding the watch till me blood got riled; and all that rat of a kid
does is to dr-rop a few hundred husky bohunks into his pocket and lug
'em up the bank to overtime on a foine night like this. It's
dishear-rtening. A chap can't get up a recent foight out here. I'm
going back to civilisation where they still bang each other about a bit
in a friendly way, thank God! Where'd yeer father pick him up, Tressa?"

"He didn't 'pick him up'," replied Tressa indignantly.

The merry eyes of the engineer came round to her in a slow circle.

"I'm always making mistakes like that. I never can tell when a
couple's married--not unless he's showing the mar-rks of it about the
pate, or flir-rting wid another gir-rl. What I meant to ask was how
did yeer benevolent paterfamilias contrive to induce him to direct his
seductive manners to the uncongenial atmosphere o' construction." He
peered more closely into the laughing eyes of the girl. "And good
taste he has, too, bad cess to him! If I was younger now-- These
whiskers hide me age; they've always been me fatal lure. The girls
take to thim like ants to sugar. Me first wife took to thim so
liberally I had to cut thim off in self-protection. I used to wear
thim par-rted in the middle. Ah, a gay dog was I. That was before I
saw 'Lord Dundreary.' Sure I changed thim so quick then the gir-rls
didn't know they weren't flirting wid the same fellow. Next to being
taken for an Englishman, an Irishman would prefer old Nick himself. So
I let thim grow solid, the luxuriant and becoming gr-rowth ye're
admiring this very minute. . . . Look at that now!"

He indicated the work of unloading. Each car was being emptied at the
edge of the trestle on the other side of the grade, where a long shoot
had been scooped from the bank and walled off to direct the falling
rocks from the framework of the trestle.

"Ye'd think some o' thim beggars liked wor-rk. Koppy, there, him o'
the leering eye and forked tongue--that's Indian, ye know--he thinks
he's showing off."

Koppowski was standing on a car, legs far ap