Moreover, labor was scarce and willing workers in demand. One thing which gave the young man favor in camp was his liking for the younger boys, who frequently rode back and forth with him.
"Well, it's beginning to look like a dam, isn't it?" Tom said, as they rode along. "You won't be able to get much more stone up behind the pavilion.... The dam ought to raise the lake level about five or six feet, the engineers say. That'll mean moving a couple of the cabins back. Storm was a good thing after all, huh?"
"I guess it will be remembered around these parts for a good many years," Tom's companion said.
"And you were out in the thick of it," said Tom, in his usual cheery way. "Up on the mountain it was terrible."
"On the mountain? I was—I was just in the woods. It was bad enough there."
He looked sideways at Tom, rather curiously. He liked Tom but he could never make up his mind about him. It always seemed to him, as indeed it seemed to others, that Tom's cheery, simple, offhand talk bespoke a knowledge of many things which he did not express. It was often hard to determine what he was really thinking about.
"I think I'll see that face whenever it storms," Tom said.
"What face?"
"Harlowe's; he was just staring up in the air. Ever see a person who has suffered violent death, Hood?"
"Once."