"Connors!" cried O'Neil, warmly. "I'm glad to see you. And how are the two arms of you?"
"Better 'n ever they was, the both av them!" Mr. Connors blushed, doubled his fists and flexed his bulging muscles. "An' why shouldn't they be, when you set 'em both with your own hands, Misther O'Neil? 'Twas as good a job as Doc Gray ever done in the hospittle. I hope you're doin' well, sir." He pulled his forelock, placed one foot behind the other, and tapped it on the planking, grinning expansively.
"Very well indeed, thank you."
O'Neil's progress was slow, for half the crowd insisted upon shaking his hand and exchanging a few words with him. Clumsy Swedes bobbed their heads, dark-browed foreign laborers whose nationality it was hard to distinguish showed their teeth and chattered words of greeting.
"Bless my soul!" Gordon exclaimed, finally.
"You know more of them than I do."
"Yes! I seldom have to fire a man."
"Then you are favored of the gods. Labor is my great problem. It is the supreme drawback of this country. These people drift and blow on every breeze, like the sands of the Sahara. With more and better help I could work wonders here."
Unexpected as these salutations had been, O'Neil's greatest surprise came a moment later as he passed the first of the company buildings. There he heard his name pronounced in a voice which halted him, and in an open doorway he beheld a huge, loose-hung man of tremendous girth, with a war-bag in his hand and a wide black hat thrust back from a shiny forehead.
"Why, Tom!" he exclaimed. "Tom Slater!"