little town constable with a bit of signed paper from some lawyer or
judge be mighty enough to stop all that furious activity over there?
It's more than incredible."

From that she fell to watching the activity and the orderly purpose of
it. A length of steel, with men clustering like bees upon it, would
slide from its place on the hand-car to fall with a frosty clang on
the cross-ties. Instantly the hammermen would pounce upon it. One
would fall upon hands and knees to "sight" it into place; two others
would slide the squeaking track-gage along its inner edge; a quartet,
working like the component parts of a faultless mechanism, would tap
the fixing spikes into the wood; and then at a signal a dozen of the
heavy pointed hammers swung aloft and a rhythmic volley of resounding
blows clamped the rail into permanence on its wooden bed.

Ahead of the steel-layers were the Italians placing the cross-ties in
position to receive the track, and here the foreman's badge of office
and scepter was a pick-handle. Above all the clamor and the shoutings
Virginia could hear the bull-bellow of this foreman roaring out his
commands--in terms happily not understandable to her; and once she
drew back with a little cry of womanly shrinking when the pick-handle
thwacked upon the shoulders of one who lagged.

It was this bit of brutality which enabled her to single out Winton in
the throng of workers. He heard the blow, and the oath that went with
it, and she saw him run forward to wrench the bludgeon from the
bully's hands and fling it afar. What words emphasized the act she
could not hear, but the little deed of swift justice thrilled her
curiously, and her heart warmed to him as it had when he had thrown
off his coat to fall to work on the derailed engine of the Limited.