Off to the left, under the approach of a weather-stained wooden bridge, a group of boys were sitting around a little fire.

The smell of the wood smoke blew in at the window.

Except for an old farmer, jogging along the highroad in his box-wagon, there was not another living creature to be seen.
Alexander looked back wistfully at the boys, camped on the edge of a little marsh, crouching under their shelter and looking gravely at their fire.

They took his mind back a long way, to a campfire on a sandbar in a Western river, and he wished he could go back and sit down with them.
He could remember exactly how the world had looked then.
It was quite dark and Alexander was still thinking of the boys, when it occurred to him that the train must be nearing Allway.

In going to his new bridge at Moorlock he had always to pass through Allway.