The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-08-03

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 s spirit of romance. of adven- k&<Ia& ture. of sympathy for the picturesque and the unknown surging through his veins. A billion stars glowed like yellow, passionless eyes in the polar cold of the skies. Behind him. white in its sinuOus twisting through the snow smothered wilder ness. lay the icy Saskatchewan. with n few scattered lights visible where Prince Albert. the last outpost of civ ilization. came down to the river half . mile away.
 But it was into the north that How land looked. From the top of the great ridge which he had climbed he gnzed steadily into the white gloom which reached for. a thousand miles from where he stood to the Arctic sea Faintly in the grim silence Of the win ter night there came to his ears the soft hissing sound of the aurora bore ais as it played in its age old song over the dome of the earth. and as he watched the cold flashes shooting like pale arrows through the distant sky and listened to its whispering music of amending loneliness and mystery there came on him a strange feeling that it was beckoning to him and call ing to him. telling him that up there very near to the end of the earth lay all that he had dreamed of and hoped for since he had grown old enough to begin the shaping of destiny of his own.
 He shivered as the cold nipped at his blood and lighted fresh cigar. half turning to shield himself from wind that was growing out of the east. As the match flared in the cup of his hands for an instant there came from the black gloom of the balsam and spruce at his feet wailing. hun gerful cry that brought a startled breath from his lips. It was cry such as Indian dogs make about the fepees of masters who are newly dead. He had never heard such cry be fore. and yet he knew that 1t was a wolfs. It impressed him with an awe which was new to him. and he stood as motionless as the trees about him until from out the gray night gloom to the west there came an answering cry and then from far to the north still another.
 ..Sounds as though I'd better go back to town" he said to himself. speaking aloud. By George. but it's lonely!' ~
 Jack Rowland was a Chicago man. For fifteen of his thirty-one years he had been hustling. Since he could easily remember he had possessed to a large measure but one ambition and one hope. With q persistence which had left him peculiarly stranger to the more frivolous and human sides of life he had worked toward the achieve ment of this ambition, and tonight be- cause that achievement was very near at hand he was happy. He had never been happier. There flashed across his mental vision a swiftly moving picture of the fight he had made for success. It had been q magnificent fight. With ont vanity he was proud of it, for fate had handicapped him at the beginning. and still he had won out. He saw him. self again the homeless little farmer boy setting out from his Illinois village to take up life in great city. As though it had all happened but yester- day he remembered how for days and weeks he had nearly starved, how he had sold papers at first and then by lucky chance became errand boy in a big drafting establishment. It was there that the ambition was born in him He saw great engineers come and go-men who were greater than presidents to him :nd who sought out the ens of the earth in the following of their vocation. He made slave of himself in the nurturing and strength ening of his ambition to become one of them-to be builder of railroads and bridges. tunneler of mountains. a creator of new things in new lands. Voluntarily he had kept himself in bondage. fighting ceaselessly the ob- stacles in his way. triumphing over his handicaps as few other men had tri- umphed. rising slowly. steadily. resist 1essly. until now He flung back his head and the pulse of his heart quick ened as he heard again the words of Van Horn. president of the greatest engineering company on the continent.
 ''Howland. we've decided to put you in charge of the building of the Hud- son Bay railroad. It's one of the wild est jobs we've ever had, and Gregson and Thorne don't seem to catch on. They're bridge builders and not wilder ness men. We've got to lay a single line of steel through 300 miles of the widest country in North America, and from this hour your motto is Do it or bustr You can report at Le Pas as soon as you get your traps together"
 Those words had broken the slave dom for Rowland. He had been fight ing for an opportunity. and now that the opportunity had come he was sure that he would succeed. Swiftly. with his hands thrust deep in his pockets. r-s walked down the ons eaas. street of Prince Albert. pnffing out odorous clouds of smoke from his cigar. every fiber fin him tingling with the new joy that had come into his life. Another night would see him in Le Pas. the lit tie outpost sixty miles farther east on the Saskatchewan. Then a hundred miles ny dog sledge and he would be 1n the biz wilderness camp where 30U