“It’s no higher than it was half an hour ago,” he said. “It hasn’t risen a hair’s breadth. It’ll begin to fall before long. We’re all right if we can only make the embankment hold.” Hope put new life into the men, and they worked like beavers; but whether the embankment could withstand much longer the tremendous pressure of the water against it seemed exceedingly doubtful. The whole length of the river seemed to be concentrating its strength to push against this one spot. Allan, as he paused to look up the muddy current, almost imagined that the water was rushing toward the embankment with the deliberate purpose of overwhelming it. The débris which the broad current hurried along told of the damage it was doing in other places. Lordly trees had been uprooted, outbuildings carried away, stock drowned, fertile bottom land covered with gravel and rendered worthless,—but all this seemed trivial to the boy beside the danger which threatened the road. He could guess how long it would take to rebuild this great stretch of embankment, should it be swept away. For weeks and months, the system must lay powerless, lifeless, disrupted. Mr. Schofield bent over the gauge again and looked at it. “She’s going down, boys!” he cried, rising with beaming face. “She’s gone down half an inch. We’re going to win this fight!” But how slowly the water receded! It seemed to Allan, at times, that it was rising again; but the crest of the flood had passed, and by the next day the danger was quite over. The embankment had to be rebuilt where it had been badly washed; and it was rebuilt more strongly than ever, and guarded by a wall of riprap, but never for an hour was the traffic of the road interrupted. So October passed and November came. Always there was the track demanding attention,—an endless round of work which would never be completed. Always there were the trains rushing over it in endless procession,—the luxurious Limited, sending every other train headlong into a siding out of the way; the slower “accommodation,” which stops at every station along the road and is very popular with the farmers and dwellers at crossroads; the big through freight, drawn by a mighty giant of an engine, hauling two thousand tons of grain or beef or coal to the great Eastern market. And the through freight is the greatest of them all, for it is the money-maker. The Limited, glittering with polished brass and rare woods and plate-glass, is for show,—for style. It makes the road a reputation. It figures always in the advertisements in big type and on the back of folder and time-table in gorgeous lithograph. Its passengers look out with aversion at the dingy, ugly freight, standing on the siding, waiting for it to pass. But it is the freight that is meat and drink to the road; it enables it to keep out of the receiver’s hands, and sometimes even to pay dividends.