got it all. But go on."

"Now you are ready for the grand-stand play. Call in all your
narrow-gauge rolling stock, mass your men at this end of the branch,
shove the right-hand rail over to the line of gauge spikes in sections
as long as your force will cover, and follow up with a standard-gauge
construction train to pick up the men and carry them forward as fast as
a section is completed. If you work it systematically, a freight train
could leave Denver two hours behind your track-gangs and find a
practical standard gauge all the way to Saint's Rest."

"Of course!" said Frisbie, in workmanlike disgust for his own
obtuseness. "I'm going back to the Tech when your railroad is finished
and learn a few things. I couldn't think of anything but the old Erie
Railroad scheme, when it was narrowed down from the six-foot gauge. They
did it in one night; but they had a man to every second cross-tie over
the whole four hundred miles from New York to Buffalo."

Ford nodded, adding:

"And we're not that rich in labor. By the way, how are the men coming?"

"A car-load or two, every little while. Say, Stuart, you must have had a
rabbit's foot with you when you touched up the eastern labor agencies.
Every other railroad in this neck of woods is skinned, and M'Grath is
having the time of his life trying to hold our levies together. There is
a small army of them under canvas at Saint's Rest, waiting for the
contractors, and another with between two and three hundred hands camped
at the mouth of the canyon."

Ford knocked the ashes from his pipe so hard that the pipestem fell in
two.

"Yes! all waiting on Mr. Colbrith's leisurely motions! Well, jump in on
the Plug Mountain. That will utilize some of the waste for a few days."

Frisbie went down to the Plug Mountain yard office, and to a wire-end,
to begin the marshaling of his forces; and Ford, with three picked-up
stenographers to madden him, took up the broken threads of his
correspondence with a world which seemed to have become suddenly peopled
to suffocation with eager sellers of railroad material and supplies.

Late in the afternoon, when he was tired enough to feel the full force
of the blow, a New York telegram came. It was from Miss Alicia Adair,
and Ford groaned in spirit when he read it.

Brother left here yesterday in the Vanderdecken yacht for Nova
Scotia. Can not reach him by telegraph until next Friday or
Saturday. Aunt Hester wants to know if the