e shirt. Ye do your work, and ye swallow the kerosene
ile and rubber pipestems dished up to ye by the Dago cook for food.
Ye light your pipeful, and say to yoursilf, "Nixt week I'll break
away," and ye go to sleep and call yersilf a liar, for ye know ye'll
never do it.'

"'Who is this general man,' asks I, 'that calls himself De Vega?'

"''Tis the man,' says Halloran, 'who is tryin' to complete
the finishin' of the railroad. 'Twas the project of a private
corporation, but it busted, and then the government took it up. De
Vegy is a big politician, and wants to be prisident. The people want
the railroad completed, as they're taxed mighty on account of it. The
De Vegy man is pushin' it along as a campaign move.'

"''Tis not my way,' says I, 'to make threats against any man, but
there's an account to be settled between the railroad man and James
O'Dowd Clancy.'

"''Twas that way I thought, mesilf, at first,' Halloran says, with a
big sigh, 'until I got to be a lettuce-eater. The fault's wid these
tropics. They rejuices a man's system. 'Tis a land, as the poet says,
"Where it always seems to be after dinner." I does me work and smokes
me pipe and sleeps. There's little else in life, anyway. Ye'll get
that way yersilf, mighty soon. Don't be harbourin' any sintiments at
all, Clancy.'

"'I can't help it,' says I; 'I'm full of 'em. I enlisted in the
revolutionary army of this dark country in good faith to fight for
its liberty, honours and silver candlesticks; instead of which I
am set to amputatin' its scenery and grubbin' its roots. 'Tis the
general man will have to pay for it.'

"Two months I worked on that railroad before I found a chance to get
away. One day a gang of us was sent back to the end of the completed
line to fetch some picks that had been sent down to Port Barrios to
be sharpened. They were brought on a hand-car, and I noticed, when I
started away, that the car was left there on the track.

"That night, about twelve, I woke up Halloran and told him my scheme.

"'Run away?' says Halloran. 'Good Lord, Clancy, do ye mean it? Why, I
ain't got the nerve. It's too chilly, and I ain't slept enough. Run
away? I told you, Clancy, I've eat the lettuce. I've lost my grip.
'Tis the tropics that's done it. 'Tis like the poet says: "Forgotten
are our friends that we have left behind; in the hollow lettuce-land
we will live and lay reclined." You better go on, Clancy. I'll stay,
I guess. It's too early and cold, and