something had happened during the visit of a Montreal superintendent
engineer that had given him a hint. It was not exactly disturbing,
because Festing had, to some extent, foreseen the line the
superintendent would take; but a post to which he thought he had a claim
had been offered to somebody else. The post was not remarkably
well paid, but since he was passed over now, he would, no doubt, be
disappointed when he applied for the next, and it was significant that
as he stood at the top of the ravine he first looked back and then
ahead.

In the distance, a dull red glow marked the bridge, where the glare of
the throbbing blast-lamps flickered across a muddy river, swollen by
melting snow. He heard the ring of the riveters' hammers and the clang
of flung-down rails. The whistle of a gravel train came faintly across
the grass, and he knew that for a long distance gangs of men were
smoothing the roughly graded track.

In front, everything was quiet. The pale-green sky was streaked along
the horizon by a band of smoky red, and the gray prairie rolled into the
foreground, checkered by clumps of birches and patches of melting snow.
In one place, the figures of a man and horses moved slowly across the
fading light; but except for this, the wide landscape was without life
and desolate. Festing, however, knew it would not long remain a silent
waste. A change was coming with the railroad; in a few years, the
wilderness would be covered with wheat; and noisy gasoline tractors
would displace the plowman's teams. Moreover, a change was coming to
him; he felt that he had reached the trail fork and now must choose his
path.

He was thirty years of age and a railroad builder, though he hardly