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AS ABNER drew near the railroad camp he saw that Sheriff Bascom's labour gang was already in possession of the stables and tents. Men were coming and going; teamsters chivvied mules out of the stables, and their oaths came to Abner through the hazy autumn air. Now and then other sounds were overpowered by the sudden churring of some big tractor, which roared for a few seconds and then coughed into silence after the manner of cold machinery.

The stir, the movement, the purposefulness of all these activities brought to Abner a renewed feeling that life was solid and real; a motif which his own existence in Lanesburg lacked.

He walked down the hill, drawing in deep lungfuls of air. He was going to do something at last. For the next month or two he would work, sweat, swear during the day, and tipple and gamble at night.

He strode on toward this final taste of life with joyful strides when he saw ahead of him a little black-haired fellow with two buckets dipping water out of a great spring. This man or boy wore the neatest overalls that Abner had ever seen; in fact, the legs of the overalls had been pressed and the creases stood out clear cut in the sunlight. The fellow rinsed his buckets with great care in the lower part of the spring, then swished water in his barrels, threw that out, and finally began filling the barrels from the undisturbed upper part of the pool.

As Abner approached this finical labourer, his foot rattled a stone, and immediately the little man started up, jerked a