And I too belong to the railway. I am a very humble person, but--"

"You also would do anything for us?" asked Elizabeth, with her soft
laugh. "How kind you all are!"

She looked charming as she said it--her face and head lit up by the line
of flaring lights through which they were slowly passing. The line was
crowded with dark-faced navvies, watching the passage of the train as it
crept forward.

One of the officials in command leapt up on the platform of the car, and
introduced himself. He was worn out with the day's labour, but
triumphant. "It's all right now--but, my word! the stuff we've
thrown in!--"

He and Anderson began some rapid technical talk. Slowly, they passed
over the quicksand which in the morning had engulfed half a train; amid
the flare of torches, and the murmur of strange speech, from the
Galician and Italian labourers, who rested on their picks and stared and
laughed, as they went safely by.

"How I love adventures!" cried Elizabeth, clasping her hands.

"Even little ones?" said the Canadian, smiling. But this time she was
not conscious of any note of irony in his manner, rather of a kind
protectingness--more pronounced, perhaps, than it would have been in an
Englishman, at the same stage of acquaintance. But Elizabeth liked it;
she liked, too, the fine bare head that the torchlight revealed; and the
general impression of varied life that the man's personality produced
upon her. Her sympathies, her imagination were all trembling towards the