“Thot’s asy.  Me fri’nd Casey did, b’gorra,” retorted McDermott.

“Loike hell he did!  It was the Irish.”

“Shure, thot’s phwat I said,” McDermott replied.

“Wal, thin, phwat built the U. P.?  Tell me thot.  Yez knows so much.”

McDermott scratched his sun-blistered, stubble-field of a face, and grinned.  “Whisky built the eastern half, an’ cold tay built the western half.”

Pat regarded his comrade with considerable respect.  “Mac, shure yez is intilligint,” he granted.  “The Irish lived on whisky an’ the Chinamons on tay....  Wal, yez is so dom’ orful smart, mebbe yez can tell me who got the money for thot worrk.”

“B’gorra, I know where ivery dollar wint,” replied McDermott.

And so they argued on, oblivious to the impressive last stage.

Neale sensed the rest, the repose in the attitude of all the laborers present.  Their hour was done.  And they accepted that with the equanimity with which they had met the toil, the heat and thirst, the Sioux.  A splendid, rugged, loquacious, crude, elemental body of men, unconscious of heroism.  Those who had survived the five long years of toil and snow and sun, and the bloody Sioux, and the roaring camps, bore the scars, the furrows, the gray hairs of great and wild times.

A lane opened up in the crowd to the spot where the rails had met.

Neale got a glimpse of his associates, the engineers, as they stood near the frock-coated group of dignitaries and directors.  Then Neale felt the stir and lift of emotion, as if he were on a rising wave.  His blood began to flow fast and happily.  He was to share their triumphs.  The moment had come.  Some one led him back to his post of honor as the head of the engineer corps.

A silence fell then over that larger, denser multitude.  It grew impressive, charged, waiting.

Then a man of God offered up a prayer.  His voice floated dreamily to Neale.  When he had ceased there were slow, dignified movements of frock-coated men as they placed in position the last spike.

The silver sledge flashed in the sunlight and fell.  The sound of the driving-stroke did not come to Neale with the familiar spang of iron; it was soft, mellow, golden.

A last stroke!  The silence vibrated to a deep, hoarse acclaim from hundreds of men—­a triumphant, united hurrah, simultaneously sent out with that final message, “Done!”

A great flood of sound, of color seemed to wave over Neale.  His eyes dimmed with salt tears, blurring the splendid scene.  The last moment had passed—­that for which he had stood with all faith, all spirit—­ and the victory was his.  The darkness passed out of his soul.

Then, as he stood there, bareheaded, at the height of this all-satisfying moment, when the last echoing melody of the sledge had blended in the roar of the crowd, a strange feeling of a presence struck Neale.  Was it spiritual—­was it divine—­was it God?  Or was it only baneful, fateful—­the specter of his accomplished work—­a reminder of the long, gray future?