of which must be fabricated to a careful pattern.  It was a man-sized job, and O’Neil was thankful that he had prepared so systematically for the work; that he had gathered his materials with such extraordinary care.  Supplies were arriving now in car-loads, in train-loads, in ship-loads:  from Seattle, from Vancouver, from far Pittsburg they came in a thin continuous stream, any interruption of which meant confusion and serious loss of time.  The movement of this vast tonnage required the ceaseless attention of a corps of skilled men.

He had personally directed affairs up to this point, but he now obliterated himself, and the leadership devolved upon two others —­Parker, small, smiling, gentle-mannered; Mellen, tall, angular, saturnine.  Upon them, engineer and bridge-builder, O’Neil rested his confidence, serene in the knowledge that of all men they were the ablest in their lines.  As for himself, he had all he could do to bring materials to them and to keep the long supply-trail open.  Long it was, indeed; for the shortest haul was from Seattle, twelve hundred miles away, and the steel bridge members came from Pennsylvania.

The piers at Omar groaned beneath the cargoes that were belched from the big freighters—­incidentally, “Happy Tom” Slater likewise groaned beneath his burdens as superintendent of transportation.  At the glaciers a city as large as Omar sprang up, a city with electric lights, power-houses, machine shops, freight yards, and long rows of winter quarters.  It lay behind ramparts of coal, of grillage timbers and piling, of shedded cement barrels, and tons of steel.  Over it the winter snows sifted, the north winds howled, and the arctic cold deepened.

Here, locked in a mountain fastness more than a thousand miles from his base of supplies, O’Neil began the decisive struggle of his life.  Here, at the focusing point of his enterprise, in the white heat of the battle, he spent his time, heedless of every other interest or consideration.  The shifts were lengthened, wages were increased, a system of bonuses was adopted.  Only picked men were given places, but of these there were hundreds:  over them the grim-faced Mellen brooded, with the fevered eye of a fanatic and a tongue of flame.  Wherever possible the men were sheltered, and steam-pipes were run to guard against the cold; but most of the labor was, of necessity, performed in the open and under trying conditions.  At times the wind blew a hurricane; always there was the bitter cold.  Men toiled until their flesh froze and their tools slipped from their fingers, then dragged themselves stiffly into huts and warmed themselves for further effort.  They worked amid a boiling snow-smother that hid them from view, while gravel and fine ice cut their faces like knives; or again, on still, sharp days, when the touch of metal was like the bite of fangs and echoes filled the valley to the brim with an empty clanging.  But they were no ordinary fellows—­no chaff,