Five minutes later he halted the black at the crest of the big railroad cut and looked over the edge appraisingly. Fifty laborers--directed by a mammoth personage in dirty blue overalls, boots, woolen shirt, and a wide-brimmed felt hat, and with a face undeniably Irish--were working frenziedly to keep pace with the huge steam shovel, whose iron jaws were biting into the earth with a regularity that must have been discouraging to its human rivals. A train of flat-cars, almost loaded, was on the track of the cut, and a dinky engine attached to them wheezed steam from a safety valve, the engineer and fireman lounging out of the cab window, lazily watching. Patrick Carson, the personage--construction boss, good-natured, keen, observant--was leaning against a boulder at the side of the track, talking to the engineer at the instant Trevison appeared at the top of the cut. He glanced up, his eyes lighting. "There's thot mon, Trevison, ag'in, Murph'," he said to the engineer. "Bedad, he's a pitcher now, ain't he?" An imposing figure Trevison certainly was. Horse and rider were outlined against the sky, and in the dear light every muscle and feature of man and beast stood but boldly and distinctly. The big black horse was a powerful brute, tall and rangy, with speed and courage showing plainly in contour, nostril and eye; and with head and ears erect he stood motionless, statuesque, heroic. His rider seemed to have been proportioned to fit the horse. Tall, slender of waist, broad of shoulder, straight, he sat loosely in the saddle looking at the scene below him, unconscious of the admiration he excited. Poetic fancies stirred Carson vaguely. "Luk at 'im now, Murph; wid his big hat, his leather pants, his spurs, an' the rist av his conthraptions! There's a divvil av a conthrast here now, if ye'd only glimpse it. This civillyzation, ripraysinted be this railroad, don't seem to fit, noways. It's like it had butted into a pitcher book! Ain't he a darlin'?" "I've never seen him up close," said Murphy. There was none of Carson's enthusiasm in his voice. "It's always seemed to me that a felluh who rigs himself out like that has got a lot of show-off stuff in him."