“Hi don’t awsk any ’elp,” muttered Ben.  “Just one man—­”

“You mean that Swede with the big white mare in the lead?” interrupted Conniston, quickly.

Ben looked at him swiftly.  Grunting an answer which Conniston did not catch, he turned and went back along the edge of the ditch.

The Swede was again coming up the bank.  At the top he did as he had done more than once before:  turned out in a wide circle, letting two men pass him.  The Englishman strode swiftly toward him.

“Hi, there, you big Swede!” he yelled, his words accompanied by a volley of insulting epithets born in the slums of London.  “Wot you trying to do?  Want the ’ole works to pawss you w’ile you rest?  You blooming spoonbill, get inter that!  Step lively, man!”

The Northlander’s heavy, slow-moving feet stopped entirely as he turned a stolid face toward the foreman.

“I bane to like I tam plase,” he muttered, slowly.  “Yo bane go hell.”

The big Englishman sprang back, swept up a broken pick-handle half buried in the sand, and leaped forward.  As he leaped he swung the bit of heavy, hard wood above his head.  The Swede dropped his reins and threw up his arms to guard himself, but the pick-handle, wielded in a great, sinewy right hand, beat down his arms and struck him a crashing blow across his forehead.  Conniston heard the thud of it where he stood.  The Swede’s arms flew out and he went down like a steer in a slaughter-house.

“You bloody spoonbill!” cried the Englishman, standing over the prostrate body.  “Wot are you laying down for?  Get hup, hor Hi’ll beat the bloody ’ead hoff your bloody shoulders!  Get hup!”

Slowly, weakly, reeling as he got upon his knees, the Swede rose to his feet.  A great, smoldering, cold-blooded wrath shone in his blue eyes, mingled with a surly fear.  He made no motion toward the man who stood three feet from him threatening him.  Nor did he stir toward his fallen reins.  Instead he turned half about toward the camp.

“I bane quit,” he muttered, thickly.  “I bane get my time.”

“Quit!” yelled Ben—­“quit, will you!”

The Swede muttered something which Conniston did not catch.  Ben took one short, quick step forward, swinging his pick-handle high above his head.  For a moment the Swede paused, hesitating.  And then, again muttering, he stooped, picked up his reins, and swung his team back into the cut.

The other men had all stopped to watch.  Now Ben swung about upon them, his voice lifted in a string of cockney oaths, commanding them not to stand still all day, but to get to work.  At almost his first word the teams began to move again, the men laughing, calling to one another, jeering at the defeated Swede, or merely shrugging their shoulders.  And Greek Conniston, his face still white from what he had just witnessed, began to see, although still dimly, what it was he had taken into his two hands to do.