Noon
Now and again they found a rotten post which must be taken out , while a new one from a row which had been dumped from a wagon yesterday was put into its place . It was easy work , and Conniston found , that he rather enjoyed the novelty of it . But as hour after hour dragged by with the same unceasing monotony , as the sun crept burning into the hot sky , and the wires , the crowbar , even the pick-handle blistered his hands , he began to feel the cramp of fatigue in his stooping shoulders and in his forearms and back . Noon came at last , and he and Lonesome Pete ate the cold lunch which the latter had brought , drank from the bottle of water , and lay down for a smoke . Conniston had left his pipe at the bunk-house , and accepted from his fellow-worker his coarse , cheap tobacco and brown papers . The morning had been endlessly long . The afternoon was an eternity .