“Mr. Haynes,” Tom asked, anxiously, one day, “would you have done the same as we did, had you been in our place?”

“I don’t know, my boy,” replied the railway president, with a frank smile.  “I’d hope that I would have done the same, but I don’t know that I would have had the same magnificent courage that you two displayed throughout.  It isn’t every man who has the courage to back his conscience with his life.”

Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton remained some three months longer in the mountains of Bonista.  Finally, when they could be spared from the task of superintending the start of this rich mineral claim they returned to the United States.

“And what is to become of me, caballeros?” Nicolas mournfully inquired, the day before their departure.

“Do you think you could stand life with us, in the United States?” asked Tom.

“Could I?” exclaimed the poor fellow, clasping his hands.  “Senor, do not jest with me!  Can it be that you mean it?”

“I certainly do,” nodded Tom.

Ambition’s lure led the young engineers back to the home country.  We shall speedily find them engaged again in the great fields of their calling, and we shall find them, too, in a setting of truly extraordinary adventure.  All that happened to them will be stirringly told in the next volume of this series, which is published under the title, “The Young Engineers On The Gulf; Or, The Dread Mystery of the Million-dollar Breakwater.”