“And now, Jack, where are you going to live,—­in the village?” asked his Chief, resting the level and tripod carefully against a tree trunk and seating himself beside Jack on a fallen log.

“Out here, if you don’t mind, sir, where I can be on top of the work all the time.  It’s but a short ride for Ruth and she can come and go all the time.  I am going to drop some of these trees; get two or three choppers from the village and knock up a log-house like the one I camped in when I was a boy.”

“Where will you put it?” asked MacFarlane with a smile, as he turned his head as if in search of a site.  It was just where he wanted Jack to live, but he would not have suggested it.

“Not a hundred yards from where we sit, sir—­a little back of those two big oaks.  There’s a spring above on the hill and sloping ground for drainage; and shade, and a great sweep of country in front.  I’ve been hungry for this life ever since I left home; now I am going to have it.”

“It will be rather lonely, won’t it?” The engineer’s eyes softened as they rested on the young fellow, his face flushed with the enthusiasm of his new resolve.  He and Ruth’s mother had lived in just such a shanty, and not so very long ago, either, it seemed,—­ those were the happiest years of his life.

“No!” exclaimed Jack.  “It’s only a step to the town; I can walk it in half an hour.  No, it won’t be lonely.  I will fix up a room for Uncle Peter somewhere, so he can be comfortable,—­he would love to come here on his holidays; and Ruth can come out for the day,—­ she will be crazy about it when I tell her.  No, I will get along.  If the lightning had struck my ore beds I would probably have painted and papered some musty back room in the village and lived a respectable life.  Now I am going to turn savage.”

The next day the contracts were signed:  work to commence in three months.  Henry MacFarlane, Engineer-in-Chief, John Breen in charge of construction.

It was on that same sofa in the far corner of the sitting-room that Jack told Ruth,—­gently, one word at a time,—­making the best of it, but telling her the exact truth.

“And then we are not going to have any of the things we dreamed about, Jack,” she said with a sigh.

“I am afraid not, my darling,—­not now, unless the lightning strikes us, which it won’t.”

She looked out of the window for a moment, and her eyes filled with tears.  Then she thought of her father, and how hard he had worked, and what disappointments he had suffered, and yet how, with all his troubles, he had always put his best foot foremost—­ always encouraging her.  She would not let Jack see her chagrin.  This was part of Jack’s life, just as similar disappointments had been part of her father’s.

“Never mind, blessed.  Well, we had lots of fun ‘supposing,’ didn’t we, Jack.  This one didn’t come true, but some of the others will and what difference does it make, anyway, as long as I have you,” and she nestled her face in his neck.  “And now tell me what sort of a place it is and where daddy and I are going to live, and all about it.”