enneth was shaking his head.

"I can't believe it, Ford. You're blue because Mr. Colbrith has thrown
Mr. North into your boat as ballast. I don't blame you: but you mustn't
let it make you color-blind."

Ford said nothing. The day was yet young, and the long journey was still
younger. It was at the noon halt, made at a subcontractor's camp near a
great earth-cutting and a huge fill, that Kenneth had his object lesson.

They were standing at the door of the timekeeper's shanty--they had been
the timekeeper's guests for the noon meal--and the big gang of Italians,
with its inevitable Irish foreman, was already at work. Out at the head
of the great fill a dozen men were dumping the carts as they came in an
endless stream from the cutting. Suddenly there was a casting down of
shovels, a shrill altercation, a clinch, a flash of steel in the August
sunlight, and one of the disputants was down, his heels drumming on the
soft earth in the death agony.

"Good God!" said Kenneth. "It's a murder!" and he would have rushed in
if Ford and the timekeeper had not held him back.

The object lesson was sufficiently shocking, but its sequel was still
more revolting. Without one to kneel beside the dying man; indeed,
without waiting until the drumming heels were still; the men callously
put their shovels under the body, slid it over the lip of the dump and
left it to be covered by the tumbling cataract of earth pouring from the
tip-carts whose orderly procession had scarcely been interrupted by the
tragedy.

Kenneth was silent for many minutes after they had left the camp of the
Italians. He was a Western man only by adoption; of Anglo-Saxon blood,
and so unable to condone the Latin's disregard for the sacredness of
human life.

"That was simply terrible, Ford," he said finally, and his voice was
still in sympathy with the shaking hand that held the bridle-reins.
"Will nothing be done?"

"Nothing; unless the murdered man chances to have relatives or clansmen
in one of the near-by camps--in which case there'll be another killing."

"But the law," said Kenneth.

"There is no law here higher than the caprice of Brian MacMorrogh.
Besides, it's too common--a mere episode; one of those which you said
you couldn't believe, a little while back."

"But can't you make the MacMorroghs do a little police work, for common
decency's sake?"

Ford shook his head. "They are quite on the other side of the fence, as
I told you in the beginnin