"Oh, nothing! You must look at this piece of line." And as they ran down the long ravine from Field to Golden, beside a river which all the way seems to threaten the gliding train by the savage force of its descent, he played the showman.

The epic of the C.P.R .-- no one knew it better, and no one could recite it more vividly than he.
So also, as they left the Rockies behind; as they sped along the Columbia between the Rockies to their right and the Selkirks to their left; or as they turned away from the Columbia, and, on the flanks of the Selkirks, began to mount that forest valley which leads to Roger's Pass, he talked freely and well, exerting himself to the utmost.

The hopes and despairs, the endurances and ambitions of the first explorers who ever broke into that fierce solitude, he could reproduce them; for, though himself of a younger generation, yet by sympathy he had lived them.

And if he had not been one of the builders of the line, in the incessant guardianship which preserves it from day to day, he had at one time played a prominent part, battling with Nature for it, summer and winter.
Delaine, at last, came out to listen.

Philip in the grip of his first hero-worship, lay silent and absorbed, watching the face and gestures of the speaker.