"Have you lost your last wit, Ned?"

"Not quite. I'm going to give my report to my superior officer by word of mouth. That big gray power-boat is one of our own company's launches. That small blue flag is the company ensign. And that big gray man standing 'midships is--Breckenridge! Breck the Great, his very self."

"Breckenridge!"

"Breckenridge. All there, too--every splendid inch of him. Talk about luck! Our levee is saved. Our dredges are all anch.o.r.ed, right yonder, trim as a gimlet. Our schedule is put through up to the minute. And here, precisely on the psychological moment, comes our chief on his tour of inspection. Can you beat that?"

Roderick merely stared down the ca.n.a.l.

Close behind the launch pilot, scanning the bank intently as they steamed by, towered a broad-shouldered, heavily built man, gray-headed, yet powerful and alert in every movement. He was well splashed with mud; his broad, heavily featured face was colorless with fatigue. Yet as he stood there, with his big tense body, his tired, eager face, he seemed like some magnificent natural force imprisoned in human flesh.

"Isn't he sumptuous, though?" said Burford, under his breath. "Look at those shoulders! What a half-back he would make!"

"Half-back? Why, he could make the All-American," Rod whispered back.

His eyes were glued to that tall approaching figure. His heart was pounding in his breast. So this was Breckenridge the Great, his hero!

And, marvel of marvels, he looked the hero of all Rod's farthest dreams.

Breckenridge stepped from the launch and shook hands heartily with the radiant and stammering Burford. He looked at Roderick with steady dark eyes. He hardly spoke in reply to Burford's introduction. But the grip of his big, muscular hand was warmly cordial.

He asked a few brief questions. Then he listened, his heavy head bent, his heavy-lidded eyes half closed, to Burford's eager account of their struggles and their triumphs. Almost without speaking he clambered into the launch again and motioned the boys to follow.

For four consecutive hours the three went up and down the rough miry channels. Roderick steered the launch. Burford answered Breckenridge's occasional questions. Breckenridge stood, field-gla.s.s in hand, sweeping first one bank, then another with tireless eyes. He made almost no comment on Burford's explanations; but the slow occasional nod of his ma.s.sive head was eloquent.

Finally they retraced the last lateral and brought the launch up to the main landing.

"No, I'll not stop to dine with you, much as I should enjoy it. I must be getting on to the next contract. They're seeing heavy weather too."

Breckenridge stood up, stretching his big, cramped body. As he stood there, brushing the clay from his coat, he seemed to loom.

"I have nothing much to say to you fellows," he went on in his quiet, casual voice, "only to remark that you must have worked like Trojans.

You have made a far larger yardage record than we had dared to expect. You've put brains into your work, too. Can't say I'm surprised at your success, by the way. I was pretty certain from what Crosby said that you two would swing this contract, all right. Crosby and I had a talk in Chicago a week or so ago. We were in Tech together.

Naturally he's quite a pal of mine, though nowadays we're opponents in a business way. But his opinion weighs heavily with me. And now that I have gone over the ground for myself, I am inclined to think that Crosby rather--well, that he underestimated your services to the company." Again his big head bent with that queer slow nod. For a moment Breck himself, the real man, alert, just, keenly understanding, flashed a glance from behind that heavy mask of splendid, impa.s.sive flesh. "Later you will probably receive a more detailed explanation of my opinion on your work. Good luck to you both, and good-by."

He stepped into the launch. The powerful boat dashed away down the rough yellow ca.n.a.l.

The boys stood and looked after him. Burford was wildly exultant. But Roderick was silent. A curious, deep satisfaction lighted his stolid, boyish face. Every word that Breckenridge had spoken was tingling in his blood. At last he had met his hero face to face, man to man. And his hero had proven all that heart could ask.

"I wish I knew what he meant by saying that you'd hear further as to his opinion on your work," pondered Marian.

Just two days later her wish was gratified.

It was a rainy, dreary day. Rod had spent the morning up the laterals and had come home dripping. Marian was trying to dry his soaked clothes before the smoky little oil-stove, but without much success.

Just before noon she heard a welcome whistle. She ran down the bank to meet the rural delivery-man in his little spider-launch. The roads were long since impa.s.sable; the mail and all the camp supplies must come by water.

"Stacks of letters, Rod. A fat official one for the Burfords and a still fatter, more official one for you. Do read it and tell me your news."

"All right, Sis." Rod pushed aside his blueprints and set to opening his mail.

Marian looked over her own letters. They were all of a sort: pleasant, affectionate notes from her friends at home. All, with one accord, besought her to hurry back to college for commencement. All earnestly pitied her for the tedious weeks that she was spending "in that rough, dreadful western country."

Marian's eyes twinkled as she read. At the bottom of the pile lay a note from her good friend Isabel, begging her for the twentieth time to spend August with her in her beautiful home at Beverly Farms.

Marian read that letter twice. Her dark brows narrowed.

Before her eyes gleamed Isabel's home, the great beautiful house, set on a terraced emerald-green hill. Behind it, dark, cool, mysterious, lay the pine woods; before it flashed and gleamed the sea. She could see its wide, stately rooms, its soft-hued, luxurious furnishings. She could feel the atmosphere of quiet contentment, of a.s.sured ease, which was to Isabel and her mother the very air they breathed.

Then she looked around her.

Here she sat in a tiny canvas shack with a rough board floor. She looked at its mended chairs, its rag-tag rug, and stringy curtains; Rod's wet clothes, dripping before the little oil-stove; Rod's battered desk, heaped with papers and blue-prints, a ma.s.s of acc.u.mulated work. Then she looked through the tent-flap. Neither blue ocean nor deep, still forest met her eyes. Only a narrow, muddy ditch; a row of wind-torn willows; a dark, swollen river, hurrying on beneath a dark, sinister sky.

An exclamation from Rod startled her. He stooped to her, his tired face burning. With unsteady fingers he put a letter into her hand.

"Read that, Sis. No, I'll not read it aloud to you. Look at it with your own eyes."

THE BRECKENRIDGE ENGINEERING COMPANY.

OFFICE OF THE SUPERINTENDENT.

RODERICK T. HALLOWELL, C. E., _c/o Contract Camp, Grafton, Illinois._

SIR: I beg to state that certain changes in the engineering force of the company have brought about a change in the position occupied by yourself with our firm. Beginning upon the first day of June, 1912, you will be transferred to the post of a.s.sistant superintendent on a large drainage contract in northern Iowa. While your position will be second to that of Mr. McPherson, our supervising engineer, yet you will be given entire charge of the a.s.sembling of the plant and its construction. Your salary will be two thousand dollars. Payment quarterly, as is our custom.

Some objections to this promotion have been raised by members of our company on the score of your limited experience. Mr. Breckenridge, however, considers from his observation of your methods that you will prove fully equal to this exacting and responsible position.

I am, very respectfully, THE BRECKENRIDGE ENGINEERING COMPANY.

_Per_ R. W. AUSTIN, _Sec'y_.

Silent, wide-eyed, Marian read this amazing doc.u.ment. Then, with a cry of surprise and delight, she turned to her brother. But before she could speak, a storm of eager feet dashed up the cabin steps. In burst Sally Lou and Ned, headlong. Ned, breathless with excitement, waved a long official envelope. But Sally Lou, close at his heels with Thomas Tucker crowing on her arm, poured out the wild tale.

"Oh, Marian! Oh, Roderick! Oh, it's too good and grand and glorious to be true! We're going home, home, straight back to Virginia!"

"Yes, we're going home, we're fired," puffed Ned, as Sally Lou paused for breath. He sank down on the bench with a sigh of ecstasy. "Don't look so dazed, Hallowell. There is more news coming. We're ordered off this contract. But we're not ordered out of the Breckenridge Engineering Company. Not quite yet. Instead, I'm directed to report on the Dismal Swamp Ca.n.a.l the first of the month. My position will be practically the same as the one that I'm now holding. But we can live at home. _At home_, I say! Right in Norfolk, right in the midst of all Sally Lou's own home-folks, right around the corner from my own father's house. Won't we have a glorious year of it! And won't Edward Junior and Thomas Tucker be good and spoiled, though!"

"We're so happy we can't even say it to each other!" Sally Lou sat down suddenly, hiding her April face in Thomas Tucker's small pinafore. "It took Mammy Easter to express our feelings for us. 'Land, honey,' said she, 'I cert'n'y am thankful that we's goin' back to civilization. I want to climb on a real street-car again. I want to ride in an elevator. I don't care if I never sets foot in one of dem slippery little launches again, long's I live. But most of all I want to tote dese lambs out of this swamp and on to de dry land before dey grows up plumb web-footed.'"

In the midst of the laugh that followed, a launch whistled from down the ca.n.a.l.

"There's Mulcahy now. Hurry, Ned. Go down to Grafton and send your telegram to head-quarters. Good-by, folks! Come over to the martin-box to-night and we'll hold one last celebration."

Sally Lou tossed her baby to her shoulder. Away she sped beside her husband. Marian looked after the gay, hurrying figures. Then, still bewildered, she turned to Roderick.

"Well! What will happen next! Ned and Sally Lou ordered to Virginia; you promoted--it takes my breath away! But, Rod!" Her voice rose with a startled note. She looked up keenly at her brother's grave face.

"You--you dear, cold-blooded old slow-coach! How can you look so pensive and perplexed? Of all the splendid, splendid news! How could you keep still and not tell the Burfords? How can you keep still now?

If I wasn't so tired, I'd dance a jig right here on your desk!"

"I ought to be dancing jigs myself," Roderick answered. "I don't half deserve this magnificent chance, I know that. But I--I don't know what to say. I'm facing a dead wall."

"Rod, what do you mean? Of course you will accept this promotion. You must. There can't be any question!" Marian was on her knees by his chair now, clasping his cold hands in her own. Her voice rang sharp with angry affection. "Don't halt and fumble so, brother! Don't you remember, three months ago, how you fretted and hesitated about taking the position that you are holding to-day? See how you have succeeded in it! Yet look at you! To-day you are wavering and boggling and hanging back, just as you did then."

"I'm hanging back, yes. But not for the same reason." Roderick looked down at her with dark, troubled eyes. "That time, I hesitated to accept on your account. This time, I'm hesitating on my own."