. Plainly
there's nothing human around here to look at but ourselves."

So they started slowly forward over the wall. Leisurely the black man swam
to the wall, taking up the dogged trail again in the darkness behind the
pair of young engineers.

Several minutes more of cautious walking brought Tom Reade to a startled
halt.

"Look there, Harry!" uttered Reade, stopping and throwing the light ahead.

Out beyond them, not far from the end of the wall, some hundred feet of the
top had been torn away. For all the young engineers could see, the
foundations might have gone with the superstructure.

"Dynamite!" Tom muttered grimly. "So this is the way our newly-found
enemies will fight us?"

"It won't be such a big job to repair this gap," muttered Harry calmly.

"No; but it'll take a good many dollars to pay the bills," retorted Tom.

"Well, the expense can't be charged to us, anyway," maintained Harry. "We
didn't do this vandal's work, and we didn't authorize its being done."

"No; but you know why it was done, Harry," Tom continued. "It was because
we drove the gamblers out of the camp, and thus made enemies for ourselves
on both sides of the camp lines."

"Anyway, the company's officers can't blame us for trying to maintain
proper order in the camp," Hazelton insisted stoutly.

"Not if we can stop the outrages with this one explosion, perhaps," replied
Tom thoughtfully. "Yet, if there are many more tricks like this one played
on the wall you'll find that the company's officers will be blaming us all
the way up to the skies and down again. Big corporations are all right on
enforcing morality until it hits their dividends too hard. Then you'll
find that the directors will be urging us to let gambling go on again if
the laborers insist on having it."

"Well, we won't have gambling in the camp, anyway," Harry retorted
stubbornly. "We're simply looking after the interests of the men
themselves. I wonder why they can't see it, and act like men, not fools."

"We're going to stop the gambling, and keep it stopped," Tom went on, his
jaws setting firmly together. "But, Harry, we're going to have a big row
on our hands, and various attempts against the company's property will be
made."

"If the company's officers order us to let up on the gambling," proposed
Harry, "we can resign and get out of this business altogether."

"We won't resign, and we won't knuckle down to any lot of swindlers either,
Harry!"