s again, the extra work it entails will not be
paid for. You may take that as a warning, Koppy. Tell them"--his eyes
were flashing, though his voice had not risen--"that extra work caused
by damage to the line will always be done overtime--and--they're
going--to do it--without pay. Understand? Now clear out."

CHAPTER VIII

A TRAGEDY OF CONSTRUCTION

Stretched on the dry grass beside the trestle, hanging perilously over
the edge of the dizzy drop to the river bottom, Tressa watched the
unceasing struggle with the hungry quicksands.

A hive of industry was below her--men and horses, huge tree trunks and
masses of rock, network trestle and piled poles. Men swarmed
everywhere, appearing from her height mere dots of movement,
ridiculously unfit to cope with the force that was making her father so
irritable these days.

Two distinct gangs were at work. Over beyond the water the filling in
of the trestle was almost complete, the material being hauled by a
train working from cuttings to the west. A great hundred-and-fifty
foot bank of loose earth had swallowed the "crazy conthraption" to the
very edge of the water, sloping steeply upward at its near side from
the bridge that spanned the permanent course of the river. Everything
hung now waiting only for the choking of the quicksand to commence the
filling of the near side.

From bank to bank of the river a heavy boom of logs caught the trees
felled in the forest above and floated down for the great maw that had
already swallowed so much. These trees, trimmed of all but their
larger branches, were being drawn to the shore by the surer footed men
and several teams of horses; the river bottom down there was a tangle
of trunks ready to feed to the quicksands.

Closer in beneath the bank over which she looked men were piling rocks
on the spongy area, as they had been for weeks--as they were a year ago
under O'Connor--as they might be forever, unless luck favoured her
father.

To the inexperienced eye the scene was ceaseless activity, but Tressa
had long since learned the skill with which the bohunk conceals his
laziness. A dozen civilised workmen would accomplish as much as three
times their number of foreigners. But this was a bohunk's job;
civilised workmen treated it as a plague.

The swift figure of Adrian Conrad moved from group to group, leaving a
wake of energy. By sheer personality and grit he gained his ends,
though railway construction was as