utmost. And who could know until the hour was past whether or no each man had done his utmost?
“I jes’ got to trust ’em,” he said, over and many times over. “But, by———, I’ll kill the man what don’t bring in his mob, I will. I will.”
The wind plucked their skins with wet sharpened fingers; it spread the gutters into froth, and spun shingle abroad, and flattened the tussocks where straining hands grasped at it. The boys’ eyes stung and blinded in the sockets, and the whistle fell dumb on their lips. But the dogs worked by the arm-swing and the jerked stone, and by their own stout-hearted wisdom; and slowly and very heavily, the line drew forward and together, and ran, stream by stream, to the slope of the Dome’s western flank.
Night was very near, and the wind blew by in great scuds of rain. Perhaps none but Ted Douglas could have picked each separate lot and the man in charge, and he said little as the sodden mobs tailed in. But Danny, tripping on the first mouthful of speech to his fellows since daybreak, declared:
“Ted’s feelin’ good down ter the bottom of his spines, he is. An’ so is we feelin’ good, an’ why not? ’Tain’t every periodic set o’ fellers as cud ’a’ mustered on the Brothers ter-day.”
“Well, now, an’ cock you up,” cried Tod,
