She did not point toward the dam. Her quivering finger found out a moving figure far below it in the creek-bed. It was Hapgood. The explosion which had demolished the work of weary weeks had shaken the ground under his flying feet so that the loose soil no longer held him. He had cried out aloud, had fought and clawed, had even bit with blackened teeth into the steep bank. And it mocked him and slipped away from him and hurled him, bruised and cut, to the bottom of the canon. Even as Conniston looked the freed waters which had chafed in the great dam leaped forward, a monster river of churning white water and whirling debris, and like a live thing, wrathful, vengeful, was charging downward through the steep ravine. Hapgood had heard. They had seen his white face turned for an instant over his shoulder. And then his shriek rose high above the thunder of waters as he ran from the merciless thing which his own hands had unchained. They saw his one hope; saw that he, too, had seen it. With the water hurling itself almost upon him, he gained the bank ten feet farther downstream, where the sides were more gently sloping. They saw him climb to a little shelf of rock a yard above the bottom of the creek. They saw his hands thrust out above his head, grasping at the root of a stunted tree. One more second-- But the fates did not grant the one single second. The churning, frothing, angry maelstrom had caught at his legs, whipping them from under him. They heard his shriek again, throbbing with terror, vibrant with a fear which was worse than despair. They saw his face, white and horrible, as he glanced again for a moment at the thing behind him. And then the swirling water leaped up at him, snarling like some mighty beast, and clutched at his throat, at his hands, and flung him like a thing of no weight far down into its own tumultuous bosom. For a moment they saw his arms, then they saw his hands clutching at the foam-flecked face of the water--and then even the hands disappeared. CHAPTER XXVII "Who was it?" It was Mr. Crawford's voice, calm, expressionless. Conniston and Argyl swung about, the horror of the thing which they had seen still widening their eyes, and saw Mr. Crawford, Jimmie Kent, and a man whom Conniston took to be Colton Gray. "Hapgood," he answered, his eyes going back to the tumult of water sweeping away the hopes of many men. Mr. Crawford stepped forward and put his hand on Conniston's arm. "We lose, my boy." His voice was as steady as it had been before, but Conniston saw that his lips quivered despite the iron will set to keep them steady. "And it could not be helped. And Conniston, my boy, my son," his tones ringing out so that all there could hear, "I am proud of you, and proud that I may call you my son!" "Greek! Poor Greek!" Argyl was clinging to him, everything lost to her but a great pity for him. "Is it to be only defeat, after all?" "Defeat!"