ry made some jesting comparison
between it and that of a mourner at a funeral. We, too, had done our share
in the building of the road, but, as far as we could see, it had signally
failed to bring us prosperity.

"You can console yourself with the feeling that it's good to be a public
benefactor, even if you don't get any money," said Harry cheerfully. "Did
it ever strike you, Ralph, that the people who subscribe for statues make
a bad choice of their models? Instead of the frock-coated director they
should set up the man with the shovel--Ralph Lorimer, rampant, clad in
flour bags, and heaving aloft the big axe, for instance, with the
appropriate motto round the pedestal under him, 'Virtue is its own
reward.' No, I'm in charge of the pulpit this afternoon, Lee."

What the shoemaker intended to say did not appear, for he smilingly
abandoned the opportunity for improving the occasion. He had put on flesh
and vigor, and now, instead of regarding him as a flippant worldling,
which was formerly his plainly expressed opinion, he even looked up in a
curious way toward my partner, and once informed me that there was a
gradely true soul in him under his nonsense. The spell of the mountains
and the company of broad-minded cheerful toilers had between them done a
good deal for Lee. Then up on the hillside a strip of bunting fluttered
from the summit of a blighted pine, the cry "She's coming!" rolled from
man to man, and there was a thunderous crash as some one fired a heavy
blasting charge. A plume of white vapor rose at the end of the valley, and
twinkling metal flashed athwart the pines, while a roar of voices broke
out and my own heart beats faster in the succeeding stillness. Enthusiasm
is contagious, and a feeling of elation grew upon me. Nearer and nearer
came the cars, and when they lurched clattering up the last grade the
snorting of the huge locomotive and the whir of flying wheels made very
sweet music to those who heard them.

Then as, with the red, quartered ensign fluttering above the head-lamp and
each end platform crowded, the train passed the last construction camp, a
swarm of blue-shirted toilers cast their hats into the air, and the scream
of the brakes was drowned in a mighty cheer, while I found myself cheering
vehemently among the rest. The blasts ceased at the funnel, and as the
slackening couplings clashed while the cars rolled slowly through the
eddying dust I started in amaze, for there were two faces at