The ganger's name was Roche, "Horse Roche"—for his mates nicknamed him "Horse" on account of his enormous strength. He could drive a nine-inch iron spike through a wooden sleeper with one blow of his hammer. No other man on the railway could do the same thing at that time; but before I passed my twenty-first birthday I could perform the same feat quite easily. Roche was a hard swearer, a heavy drinker, and a fearless fighter. He will not mind my saying these things about him now. He is dead over four years.
CHAPTER XX BOOKS
"For me has Homer sung of wars,
Æschylus wrote and Plato thought,
Has Dante loved and Darwin wrought,
And Galileo watched the stars."
—From The Navvy's Scrap Book.
Up till this period of my life I had no taste for literature. I had seldom even glanced at the daily papers, having no interest in the world in which I played so small a part. One day when the gang was waiting for a delayed ballast train, and when my thoughts were turning to Norah Ryan, I picked up a piece of paper, a leaf from an exercise book, and written on it in a girl's or woman's handwriting were these little verses: