“This here job has cost up’ards of three thousand dollars already, and for a couple of hundred more he could clean up clear to the edge of the mire, and when his pa comes back—if he ever does come back—he wouldn’t have to take a tongue-lashin’ for doin’ the job half way. I used to look upon that boy as a smart young feller. And him a civil engineer besides.” “Maybe he’s a whole lot smarter than you think,” said the ditcher significantly. “Oh, I don’t for a minute think it’s that,” said old John hastily. “Not for a minute.” “I can’t help thinkin’ we’ll turn up that old man’s body some day. It sort of gives me the creeps. Bringin’ up them horse’s bones last week sort of upset me. God knows what else may be out there in the mire.” The two big ditches, fed by lateral lines of tile, held a straight course across the upper end of the swamp and drained into Blacksnake Creek, a sluggish little stream half a mile west of Rumley. Roughly estimated, three hundred acres were being transformed into what in time was bound to become valuable land. The time would come when it could be successfully and profitably tilled. Farmers who had scoffed at the outset now grudgingly admitted that “something might come of it.” A far-seeing man from the adjoining county made an offer of ten dollars an acre for the land before the work had been under way a month. He said he was taking a gambler’s chance. Oliver was walking slowly back to the house, his head bent, his hands in his pockets, when he observed an automobile approaching over the deeply rutted, seldom traveled road. He recognized the car at once. Lansing’s yellow roadster. He frowned. Lansing was the one person he did not want to see that morning. He had lain awake for hours, seeking for some real, definite reason for hating the man—and to save his life he couldn’t think of one! And he knew that when he looked into the young doctor’s frank, honest eyes this morning, and saw the genial, whole-hearted smile in them, and heard his cheery greeting, the elusive reason would be farther from his mental grasp than ever. He simply couldn’t help liking Lansing. The car came into plain view around a bend in the road, and he saw that a woman sat beside the man at the wheel. His heart contracted—and as suddenly expanded. It wasn’t Jane. “Hello, there!” called out Lansing, while still some distance away. Oliver, peering intently through the flickering shadows of the woodland road, saw that the doctor’s companion was a stranger. A young woman—and an uncommonly pretty one he was soon to discover. He stepped off into the rank grass at the roadside and the car came to a stop. He took off his “haymaker’s” straw hat, and revealed his white teeth in the smile that no one could resist. The young woman smiled in return, and then flushed slightly.