Toil-weary though they were, their spirits were light.

They knew themselves fellow-workers in a redoubtable achievement.
Carrigan and Bryant were among the last to go.

To the latter there was in the fact of completion a sense of unreality.

As he took a final view of the ditch before setting out for camp, events raced through his mind--his coming, his first labours, the confused interplay of his life with those of the Menocals, McDonnell, Gretzinger, Carrigan, Imogene, Ruth, and Louise; the months of incessant toil; of brain-racking and body-wearing endeavour to force the canal forward; of unresting strife with frost and snow and earth, of being under a pitiless hammer.

He could not easily realize that he was now free of all this.
"I have an empty feeling," he remarked to Carrigan.
"One always has a 'let-down' after a hard job," was Pat's sage rejoinder.