He had a sheer physical delight in the power of his body, long
since thinned-out, hardened, tough as the wood into which he drove
the spikes. He loved his new comrade, Pat, the gnarled and knotted
little Irishman who cursed and complained of his job and fought his
fellow-workers, yet who never lagged, never shirked, and never
failed, though his days of usefulness must soon be over. Soon Pat
would drop by the roadside, a victim to toil and whisky and sun. And
he was great in his obscurity. He wore a brass tag with a number; he
signed his wage receipt with a cross; he cared only for drink and a
painted hag in a squalid tent; yet in all the essentials that Neale
now called great his friend Pat reached up to them--the spirit to
work, to stand his share, to go on, to endure, to fulfill his task.
Neale might have found salvation in this late-developed and splendid
relation to labor and to men. But there was a hitch in his brain. He
would see all that was beautiful and strenuous and progressive
around him; and then, in a flash, that hiatus in his mind would
operate to make him hopeless. Then he would stand as in a trance,
with far-away gaze in his eyes, until his fellow-spiker would recall
him to his neglected work. These intervals of abstraction grew upon
him until he would leave off in the act of driving a spike.
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