ion kept grubbing and grading, climbing and staking, blasting and
building, undiscouraged and undismayed. Under the eaves of a dripping
glacier, Hawkins, Hislop, and Heney crept; and, as they measured off the
miles and fixed the grade by blue chalk-marks where stakes could not be
driven, Foy followed with his army of blasters and builders. When the
pathfinders came to a deep side canon, they tumbled down, clambered up
on the opposite side, found their bearings, and began again. At one
place the main wall was so steep that the engineer was compelled to
climb to the top, let a man down by a rope, so that he could mark the
face of the cliff for the blasters, and then haul him up again.

It was springtime when they began, and through the long days of that
short summer the engineers explored and mapped and located; and ever,
close behind them, they could hear the steady roar of Foy's fireworks as
the skilled blasters burst big boulders or shattered the shoulders of
great crags that blocked the trail of the iron horse. Ever and anon,
when the climbers and builders peered down into the ragged canon, they
saw a long line of pack-animals, bipeds and quadrupeds,--some hoofed and
some horned, some bleeding, some blind,--stumbling and staggering,
fainting and falling, the fittest fighting for the trail and gaining the
summit, whence the clear, green waters of the mighty Yukon would carry
them down to Dawson,--the Mecca of all these gold-mad men. As often as
the road-makers glanced at the pack-trains, they saw hundreds of
thousands of dollars' worth of traffic going past or waiting
transportation at Skagway, and each strained every nerve to complete the
work while the sun shone.

By midsummer they began to appreciate the fact that this was to be a
hard job. When the flowers faded on the southern slopes, they were not
more than half-way up the hill. Each day the sun swung lower across the
canals, all the to-morrows were shorter than the yesterdays, and there
was not a man among them with a shade of sentiment, or a sense of the
beautiful, but sighed when the flowers died. Yes, they had learned to
love this maiden, Summer, that had tripped up from the south, smiled on
them, sung for a season, sighed, smiled once more, and then danced down
the Lynn again.

"I'll come back," she seemed to say, peeping over the shoulder of a
glacier that stood at the stage entrance; "I'll come back, but ere I
come again there'll be strange scenes and so