"How about yourself?" chuckled Blake, as he led back along the runway. "Won't take the frost two shakes to reach the centre of your circumference, once it gets through that old wolfskin coat."
"Huh! I can still go you one better, young man. I'll soon be thawing out in Florida, while you'll be trotting back here to boss the completion of T. Blake's cantilever—largest suspension span cantilever in the world."
"God!" whispered Blake, staring incredulously at the titanic structure born of his brain. "But it's mine—it is mine!… I sweat blood over those plans!"
"Doggone you, Tommy, you're no engineer—you're an inventor, Class A-1!" exulted Griffith. "First this; then the Zariba Dam. After that, the Lord only knows what! Trouble with you, you're a genius."
"And a whiskey soak!" added Blake, with a sudden upwelling of bitterness.
"Hey! what!—after this?" demanded Griffith, his voice sharp with apprehension. He could not see the face of his companion, but the manner in which Blake's head bent forward between his hunching shoulders was more than enough to confirm his alarm.
"Come, now, Tommy!" he reproached. "Don't be a fool—just when things are coming your way."
"Think so?" muttered Blake. "What d'you suppose I care for what I'd get out of this or the dam? Good God! You can't see it—yet you had Mollie!"
For a moment the older man was forced to a worried silence. It ended in an outflashing of hope. "I told you what she said about you—almost her last words. You'll win out—she said it!"
Blake halted and turned about to his friend, his face convulsed with doubt and a despondency that verged on despair. They were still half way out on the overhang of the extension arm. He pointed down to the crashing, tumbling ice far beneath his feet.