Page:St. Nicholas (serial) (IA stnicholasserial321dodg).pdf/540

388 have to go to work as soon as I leave school, and it takes a long time to be a C.E.”

“Oh, don’t mind that,” the engineer called after him, “Remember that what is n’t worth working for is n't worth having,”

In another moment he was deeply engaged in giving orders to the foreman, Jack swung his book-strap over his shoulder and made rapid strides to get home and out again to a practice game of base-ball.

For Jack the summer sped by quickly, and the autumn opened his senior year at the High School. He was taking the commercial course there, and when the school year ended he was to get a position as soon as possible.

Of course it was all right, Jack thought ruefully. He had no wish to shirk his part, especially with four smaller brothers and sisters coming after him, to be fed, clothed, and properly educated for their start in life; but his old dream of a course in some good polytechnic institute grew dearer as it grew fainter. He wished above all things to be a civil engineer; but this would take time and money, and for the present he must put aside his ambition and take whatever kind of position he could pet.

Meanwhile he was a senior, High School ’04, and too busy with studies and debates and basket-ball to think long about the future. When the railroad bridge was completed in the autumn, Jack stood in the crowd on the bank and cheered with them as the first train went across.

By Christmas-time the bridge was an old story. But at the end of January people began to complain that the winter was uncommonly severe, and to wander what the ice would do in the spring. The river was frozen from shore to shore, and had been since early December. Heavy snows and rains, followed by zero weather, had raised the ice far above the river’s average winter level.

It was a “record winter.’ February came and went, and the ice crept a little higher. It was late in March before the thaw came, and then it came suddenly—three days of hard, warm rain, royting the ice and swelling the upper courses of the stream, On the afternoon of the third day Jack went down to the river.

As he neared the bank, an old riverman whom he knew well jerked his thumb expressively toward the middle arch of the bridge.

“Oh, it ’s jamming!” exclaimed Jack, as he craned his neck eagerly and looked. The ice under the bridge arches was two feet higher than it had been the day before. Across the river, and up and down as far as he could see, the ice-feld stretched out under the driving rain, not smooth skating-ice, but ragged, tumultuous heaps, rough and dirty with the mud and debris carried down by high waters. It lay in great cakes, pushed and heaped up by the enormous pressure behind it, and looking as if an earthquake had heaved it into confusion. There was not a sign of motion in the whole length and breadth of it, yet it had risen, as all could see,

“If the gorge on the Lehigh should bust and get down here before this ice goes—” said the riverman.

“What will happen?” Jack inquired.

“Well, it may take some of this bridge along for a souvy-neer, and it may leave it here for us; but it would be cheaper for folks in this town if they ’d start that jam down-stream with a blast o’ dynamite. These here fifteen big piers do jam that ice awful.”

Jack went home quite disturbed. It had not occurred to him that the ice on the Lehigh, many miles away, might break and come down before the river was cleared here. It had never done that before. His own home was only three blocks from the river, and he felt anxious. His father was night operator in a telegraph office, and after supper the responsibility of the house would rest on Jack.

He whistled softly as he took off his wet coat, but he kept his thoughts to himself until supper was over and his father had started off for his might duty. Then he put on his hip boots and went down cellar for work.

“It ’s a little higher than it was,” he said to himself, as his mother, looking troubled, stood on the cellar stairs and held a lamp high for him. “I ’ll move things ‘way up and out of its way.”

When this was done, Jack said: “If you don’t mind, mother, I ‘ll run down and see how things are getting on. I ‘ll be right back.”

Outside he found that the rain had ceased, and a strong wind was blowing, As he came down to the river his feet splashed in shallow