a splash in the bed of the stream where it belonged by rights. After that there was a fallen tree to be tackled, a couple of rods farther on, and then he should take a rest with his shovel and fill in some holes near by.
He had found a deserted lean-to, half way up the cañon, where he had arranged to camp while the work went on. As he thought of Chittenden and Allery Jones and the rest, cooped up there in the town, still anxiously watching the fluctuations of the stock-market, he was filled with compassion for them, and he determined to have them out now and then and give them a camp stew.
Of course the exultation of that first hour's work did not last. Before the day was out, Wakefield had found out what he was "in for." An aching back and blistered hands were providing him with sensations of a less exhilarating order than those of the early morning. At one time, soon after his "nooning" as he liked to call it, the sun blazed so fiercely that he had ignominiously fled before it and taken refuge for an hour or more among the trees. That was the episode which he least liked to remember. He did not quite see why mending a road in the sun should be so much more dangerous than playing polo at high
