"You're talking foolish, Sis," said Annie, pinning the bandages all the tighter about the piled brown hair of Mary Gage's head. "But say now," she added after that was done, "if I was a girl and a fellow felt that way about me--couldn't remember nobody but me that way--why, me for him! Mushy--but times comes when a girl falls strong for the mushy, huh? "Now you lay down again and cover up your eyes and rest, or you'll never be seeing things again, sure enough. I ain't going to read no more of that strong-arm writing at all." Mary Gage heard the door close, heard the footsteps of her friend passing down the little hall. She was alone again. Her heart was throbbing high. What she first had seen was the soul of a man; a man's confession; his recessional as well. Now she knew that he was indeed going away from her life forever. Which had been more cruel, blindness or vision? CHAPTER XXXII THE ENEMY The night wore on slowly. Midnight struck, and the cold of the mountain night had reached its maximum chill. To the ears of the weary patrols there came no sound save the continuous complaint of the waters, a note rising and falling, increasing and decreasing in volume, after the strange fashion of waters carried by the chance vagaries of the air. At times the sound of the river rose to great volume, again it died down to a low murmur, the voice of a beaten giant protesting against his shackles. Came two o'clock in the morning, and the guards walked their beats with the weariness of men who have fought off sleep for hours. Sim Gage, sleepless so long, was very weary, but he kept about his work. At intervals of half an hour he crunched down the gravel-faced slope of the bank which ran from the bench level to the foot of the dam. Here he walked along the level of the great eddy, along the rocky shore, examining the face of the vast concrete wall itself, gazing also as he always did, with no special purpose, at the face of the wide and long apron where the waters foamed over, a few inches deep, white as milk, day and night. Any attempt at the use of dynamite by any enemy naturally would be made on this lower side of the dam. There were different places which might naturally be used by a criminal who had opportunity. One of these, concealed from the chance glance of any officer, was back under the apron, behind the half-completed side columns of the spill gate, where a great buttress came out to flank the apron. A charge exploded here would get at the very heart of the dam, for it would open the turbine wells and the spillway passage which had been provided for the controlled outlet.