26            THE  TRAIL OF  *98
We watched it crawl, snail-like, over the virgin sky. We panted in its heat. We saw it drop again behind the mountain wall, leaving the sky gorgeously barred with colour from a tawny orange glow to an ice-pale green—a regular pousse cafe of a sunset. Then when the cold and the dark surged back, by the light of the evening star we straightened our weary spines, and throwing aside pick and shovel hurried to supper.
Heigh-ho! what a life it was. Resting, eating, sleeping; negative pleasures became positive ones. Life's grea£ principle of compensation worked on our behalf, and to lie at ease, reading an old paper, seemed an exquisite enjoyment.
I was much troubled about the Prodigal. He complained of muscular rheumatism, and except to crawl to meals was unable to leave his bunk. Every day came the foreman to inquire anxiously if he was fit to go to work, but steadily he grew worse. Yet he bore his suffering with great spirit, and, among that nondescript crew, he was a thing of joy and brightness, a link with that other world which was mine own. They nicknamed him " Happy," his cheerfulness was so invincible. He played cards on every chance, and he must have been unlucky, for he borrowed the last of my small hoard.
One morning I woke about six, and found, pinned to my blanket, a note from my friend.
"Dear Scgtty:,
"I grieve to leave you thus, but the cruel foreman insists on me working off my ten days' board.    Racked with