_He_ knew Symonds--a chap and a half! Why didn't he come and try it on this side of the line?
Heaps of money going backwards and forwards over the railway! All these thousands of dollars paid out in wages week by week to these construction camps--must come from somewhere in cash--Winnipeg or Montreal.

He began to play with the notion, elaborating and refining it; till presently a whole epic of attack and capture was rushing through his half-crazy brain.
He had dropped the paper, and was staring abstractedly through the foot of open window close beside him, which the torn blind did not cover.
Outside, through the clearing with its stumps of jack-pine, ran a path, a short cut, connecting the station at Laggan with a section-house further up the line.
As McEwen's eyes followed it, he began to be aware of a group of men emerging from the trees on the Laggan side, and walking in single file along the path.

Navvies apparently--carrying bundles and picks.

The path came within a few yards of the window, and of the little stream that supplied the house with water.
Suddenly, McEwen sprang up in bed.

The two foremost men paused beside the water, mopped their hot faces, and taking drinking cups out of their pockets stooped down to the stream.