“I get tired soon, and there’s nothing from Bob yet,” he grumbled as he turned over the envelopes.  “It’s curious, because he told us the job was nearly finished and some of the big engineers were coming out to examine the track.  They ought to have arrived some days ago, and I’ve no doubt they’d test the work thoroughly when they were there.”

“You get too anxious,” Helen replied.  “If you had a calmer temperament, you would be stronger now.  The engineers can hardly have had time to make a proper test.”

“I have some grounds for being anxious.  If the fellows aren’t satisfied, we won’t get paid.”

Helen smiled.  “You’re really afraid that Bob may have been careless and neglected something!”

“Bob’s a very good partner; I’ve confessed that I misjudged him,” Festing answered with a touch of embarrassment.  “Still, you see, I know his drawbacks, and I know mine.  There were two or three pieces of work, done before I left, that I now see might have been better planned.”

Helen went to the door, for she heard a soft drumming of hoofs on beaten snow.

“Sadie’s coming,” she said.  “Perhaps she has some news.”

Festing followed her and Sadie stopped the horses, but did not get down.

“I’ve a telegram from Bob; he’ll be home to-morrow,” she said.  “He wants you both to meet him at the station.”

“Did he say anything about the job being finished?” Festing asked as he went down the steps.

“No,” said Sadie.  “He seemed particularly anxious to see you at the depot; my hands are too numb or I’d show you the telegram.  I haven’t time to come in and don’t want the team to stand in the cold.”

Then she waved her hand to Helen and drove away.

About six o’clock next evening Helen and Festing walked up and down beside the track at the railroad settlement.  There was no platform, but the agent’s office stood near the rails, with a baggage shed, and a big tank for filtering saline water near the locomotive pipe.  Behind these, three tall grain-elevators, which had not been finished when Festing saw them last, rose against the sky, dwarfing the skeleton frame of a new hotel.  The ugly wooden houses had extended some distance across the snow, and Festing knew the significance of this.  It was not dark yet, but the headlamp of a locomotive in the side-track flung a glittering beam a quarter of a mile down the line.  In the west, a belt of saffron light, cut by the black smear of a bluff, glimmered on the horizon.  Festing indicated the settlement.

“It has grown fast, but if things go as some of us expect, the change will soon be magical.  In a year or two you’ll see a post-office like a palace, and probably an opera-house, besides street cars running north and south from the track.”

“I think I should like that,” Helen remarked.  “When it comes, you will have an office and a telephone, and be satisfied to superintend.”