"Somebody will get a better post, and if I'm lucky I'll stay. If not, I
think I'll try the irrigation works."

"I feel like that," Kemp declared. "But suppose the irrigation people
turn our application down?"

"Then I'll lie off for a time. Except when I went, to McGill with money
I earned on a wheat barge, I haven't stopped work since I was a boy. Now
I'm getting tired and think I'll pull out and go across to look at the
Old Country. My father was an Englishman, and I have some money to
burn."

"A good plan," Kemp agreed. "After a change you come back fresh with a
stronger punch. Well, if we're not put on to the lake section, we'll try
the irrigation scheme."

He got up and went off, but Lister sat on his bunk and smoked. The bunk
was packed with swamp-grass on which his coarse Hudson's Bay blankets
were laid, and the shack was bare. Ragged slickers and old overalls
occupied the wall, long gum-boots a corner. A big box carried an iron
wash-basin, and a small table some drawing instruments. Lister was not
fastidious, and, as a rule, did not stop long enough at one spot to
justify his making his shack comfortable. Besides, he found it necessary
to concentrate on his work, and had not much time to think about
refinements.

All the same, he felt the shack was dreary and his life was bleak. He
had not felt this until he went to Winnipeg. On the whole, he had liked
the struggle against physical obstacles. It was his proper job, but the
struggle was stern and sometimes exhausting, and his reward was small.