Transcriber's note: Unusual and inconsistent spelling is as printed. [Illustration: "There's a man smoking the other side of the wall," said Chuckles, springing up in the boat. "Why, it's Cousin Ran!"] SOME BUILDERS BY AMY LE FEUVRE WITH A FRONTISPIECE BY ELIZABETH EARNSHAW CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne 1913 CONTENTS CHAPTER 1. SIDNEY 2. A CRONY AND A CLIMB 3. MONICA'S REQUEST 4. ON A SANDBANK 5. THE WIDOW 6. LETTERS 7. THE SHADOW OF A CLOUD 8. RIVALS 9. JOCKIE'S ARRIVAL 10. JOCKIE'S FRIEND 11. AUSTIN'S ENLIGHTENMENT 12. FRONTIER NEWS 13. THE MAJOR'S NEWS 14. A DIFFICULT TIME 15. THE GUNS 16. LEAVING THE OLD HOME 17. STRUCK DOWN 18. AUSTIN SPEAKS 19. RANDOLPH'S RETURN 20. A STRANGE ENCOUNTER SOME BUILDERS CHAPTER I SIDNEY "OH, God, teach me to forget! Teach me to forget!" The cry was passionate and tense, as the girl clenched the newspaper in her slender hands. The man overheard the cry by pure accident. He was lying lazily in a punt moored at the bottom of his hostess's garden, and the girl was leaning over a broad low wall, screened from view by a thick bush of syringa. She had come down to the river to be alone with her grief. He lay motionless, afraid to betray his presence; but she voiced the dreary bitterness in his own heart. He had come down from town to try to forget too. He had only arrived about an hour or two before, and was told that his cousin, Lady Fielding, had gone out for the afternoon. As he lay in his boat and heard the crackle of the newspaper in the girl's hand, he wondered dully why she, as well as he, had received a blow through the Press on the same day. He saw the announcement in his mind's eye which had staggered him that morning, when he opened the "Times" at his club. "HUGHES—KEITH. On July 29, in Bombay, by the Rev. Owen Keith, M.A., cousin of the bride, Archibald Thomas Hughes, only son of the late General Thomas Hughes, to Eva Mary, youngest daughter of Colonel William Keith, C.B., of Omeraymore, N.B." Eva had been his betrothed for over two years, and had written to him only three weeks previously, mentioning her probable return to England in the autumn. He had already been house-hunting within an easy reach of town, and was making preparations for his marriage. And he had been very deeply in love with the pretty girl who had dealt him such a bitter blow. Manlike, he had taken it silently, and was now making an effort to bear it philosophically; but the wound was too recent to be healed in such a way. "Teach me to forget," he murmured. "Only time does that, and time is a laggard when one wants him to hurry."