Deliberately he shut away all outside thoughts and put himself to this, perceiving what iron would mean to Clark, this new factor that might upset every pessimistic opinion which he himself had voiced. He sat biting at his big black mustache, till suddenly his imagination leaped clear of St. Marys and took flight to Philadelphia. What would the discovery of iron mean there? Instantly he saw a swift rise in Consolidated stock and neither Manson nor any man in St. Marys owned a share of that stock.

In two days he was on the train for Toronto, and, in three, was the owner, on margin, of two hundred thousand dollars' worth of Consolidated shares. The broker through whom he dealt looked curiously at this new customer, the only man from St. Marys who had evidenced any financial interest in Clark's enterprise, and, concluding that there was more in the transaction than met the eye, bought forthwith for himself. Then the two shook hands very cheerfully, the broker promising to watch Consolidated like a hawk, while Manson bulged with satisfaction. He would be known as the only man in St. Marys who had made a fortune out of Clark's undertakings and that was satisfying to Manson.

On the journey back he sat for hours staring out of the windows. He had shaken free from the drowsiness of a former existence. His eyes were open to the ease with which fortunes are made by those who do not hesitate but seize the opportunity. He thought rather compassionately of Worden, Dibbott and the rest, good natured but thick headed. What a surprise it would be for them. But not once did Manson imagine that he was trading peace for anxiety, and the even tenor of his former ways for the hectic restlessness of the speculator.

As he boarded the train he noticed that Clark's private car was at the end, and inside saw Riggs, Wimperley and the rest. They were talking very earnestly, oblivious to anything that went on outside. Manson, watching them from under the brim of his hat, felt a surge of satisfaction. He guessed the momentous news which brought them, and, late that night, as the train plunged through the wilderness, lay awake in his berth thinking of many things, while the occupants of the private car talked till they were weary and leaden-eyed of that which they must do at St. Marys. They were caught up, all of them, in something greater than they. Forces had been set in motion by the amazing brain of Clark which they might modulate, but could not, in any way, entirely control. The moving finger was writing, and they could, like him, only follow its mysterious command.

The private car swung along over the clicking rail joints and the directors glanced without interest at the country they traversed. The latter part of their journey was through a wilderness, wild and unpromising. At Sudbury they saw evidence of what science and energy could do in what was not long ago unbroken forest, and what wealth lay beneath the tangled roots of spruce and tamarac, but the scene did not impress them. It was a single undertaking with a single object and vitally different from their own ramified efforts, and the desolation of the country in which it flourished only accentuated their own misgivings. They were tired before the train drew in to St. Marys and decided to discuss nothing that evening. At the works station Clark met them. He was cheerful and debonair.

"Hullo, Wimperley, glad to see you. Had a good trip? You and Stoughton are coming to the blockhouse with me. The others are at the hotel. Sorry I can't put you all up."

Birch put down his bag and held out a clammy hand. "What about it?" He shot a quick glance at Wimperley.

The president of the Consolidated shook his head. "No, no, we're not going to put you out, and besides I can't trust these fellows alone. We'll all go to the hotel. See you first thing in the morning. Matter of fact, Birch talked business all the time and we're dog tired."

Clark's lips pressed a shade tighter, then his eyes twinkled. Riggs, observing him closely, wondered whether he had interpreted the expression which all four were stolidly endeavoring to mask. But so cheerful was he and so apparently unconcerned with anything but their comfort, that Riggs decided a difficult moment had been safely passed. Later at the hotel he asked the others.

"Knew," said Birch acidly, "of course he knew. The very fact that we hung together told him the whole thing. However, it might just as well begin that way."

Wimperley laughed, a foolish little laugh that drew the older man's puzzled glance. "There's something ridiculous about all this," he tittered suddenly. "We're like a flock of sheep afraid of a dog. We need a ram. You'd better be the ram, Stoughton, you're the bulkiest."

Stoughton grinned, but there was no humor in it. "It's going to take a composite ram. We've got to put down our heads and bunt together. Riggs, you can snap at his heels and distract him. Good night."

They met at the works after breakfast, and Clark, in a flood of confidence, announced the program.

"I want this to be a real visit," he said cheerfully; "it's some time since you were all here together and there's a good deal to see. When you get tired let me know. I've not forgotten the time I nearly froze Riggs to death."

As he turned to lead the way, Wimperley sent a swift signal to his companions, Clark was to have his head for the time being. Birch nodded approvingly. This was one method of finding out a good deal he wanted to know.

"Water lots," said Clark, waving a hand toward the bay that cut in below the rapids. On one side of it spread the works and on the other the town of St. Marys. "Channel dredged through, and docks, you see, are commenced."

"Why docks?" asked Stoughton patiently.

"We'll be shipping our own products in our own vessels before very long, I hope," came back the clear voice. "Save a lot that way,—I'll show you the figures. That's one thing I want to talk about later. Come on into the mill. Extensions are about completed."

They went through the great building whose floor seemed to palpitate delicately with hidden forces, and began to feel the slow fascination. They saw dripping logs snatched from the water by mechanical fingers that cut them to length and stripped the brown bark till the soft white wood lay round, naked and shining. They saw the wood ground implacably by giant stones and emerge from a milky bath in a thick wet sheet that slid on a hot drum and coiled itself in massive rolls. Power, controlled and manipulated, was the universal servant. The whole thing was punctuated by keen remarks from Clark, who shot out answers to every imaginable question with extraordinary facility. They walked up the swiftly flowing head race while the general manager pointed out its proposed expansion, and explained the pressing need for diverting more water from the rapids. As they progressed it seemed there was always more to discover. They inspected great rafts of logs, fresh from the waters of Lake Superior, then came to timber mills and machine shops. And with all Clark was supremely familiar. In the middle of it Riggs volunteered that he was tired, so they trailed back to the private office in the administration building, where Clark unrolled maps and pointed out colored areas of pulp wood which were tributary to the mills, and had been compiled from the reports of his explorers.

Suddenly Birch put out a long forefinger. "What's that?"

"That," said Clark cheerfully, "is a railway."

Birch looked puzzled. "I didn't know a road ran north from here."

"It doesn't—yet—but it's something we'll have to consider very soon to bring in pulp wood."

"Oh!" Wimperley's voice was a trifle indignant.

"It's another matter to discuss when you feel like it," went on Clark imperturbably. "The road won't cost us anything."

"Won't it? Then it will be the first thing we have touched of its kind." Wimperley tried to speak lightly.

"The Federal Government bonus will pay for one-third, the provincial bonus for another, which leaves us about seven hundred thousand to take care of. There should be no difficulty in getting that out of the sale of lands we will develop. However," he added evenly, "we needn't worry about it just now. And, by the way, I had an inquiry yesterday for forty thousand horse power. Of course we haven't got it to spare, at least not at the moment. Now will you excuse me for just a moment?"

He stepped into the general office and shut the door softly behind him. Wimperley glanced inquiringly at Stoughton.

"You haven't done much ramming this morning!"

"No, I'm not just in the mood. How about you?" Stoughton turned to Birch.

The latter did not reply. His cold eyes were taking in the severe fittings of the private office, whose walls were covered with maps and blue prints. The truth was that the spell of Clark's extraordinary intelligence was beginning to fall over them once more. It was so obvious that he was the center of the whole affair, and from him there seemed to spread out into the wilderness long filaments over which there trickled an unending stream of information.

"I didn't hear 'blast furnaces' mentioned either," piped Riggs.

"Cut it out for the present. The time hasn't come, but it will." Stoughton got up and began to walk up and down. "We've got to hear all he has to say. That's the wise thing. Let him talk himself out. He can't talk for ever."

Riggs shook his head. "Can't he?"

"No, nor any man, and be continuously to the point; and if you get a bit shaky and converted just think of dividends on seven millions. That's what we came here for. I don't care how much bluffing it costs or how many days it takes. We're here now and the only thing to do is to wait till Clark's well runs dry and then give our ultimatum. But up to that time we must do whatever he wants us to do. It's going to hurt him—that's unavoidable—it will hurt us a lot more if we don't carry our job through." All of which was a long speech for Stoughton, so he sat down and was looking defiantly truculent when Clark came in smiling.

"You fellows have had enough for to-day so I've arranged a fishing trip for this afternoon. It's a good river, only six miles out, and I own it. It's an easy drive. You leave right after lunch and won't see me again till to-morrow. Rods and things are ready, and there's a French halfbreed at the camp to cook for you. What do you say?"

The suggestion came like sudden balm in Gilead. Stoughton's face cleared. "What's your biggest fish—trout, aren't they?"

"Well," said Clark slowly, "I've never had time to fish myself, but people who come to see me like a day off. Four pounds and a half is the record so far."

It was a magic touch. Riggs and Wimperley were, like Stoughton, keen fishermen, and while Birch fished for only one prize, all felt alike that here was a surcease after a trying morning. They could pull themselves together.

With this reflection moving in his brain, Stoughton felt a stab of compunction.

"I wish you could come, old man," he jerked out to Clark.

"Thanks," said Clark with a curious light in his gray eyes, "but I think I'd better not."

Five hours later Wimperley sat under a spruce tree and gloated over his catch. Close by were the rest, each arranging a row of speckled beauties on the cool green moss. They had caught some forty trout, the biggest being a trifle over the record, and this was Wimperley's fish. He leaned back, feeling a long forgotten youth trickle into his veins. In front of him the stream dodged round great boulders and vanished into the woods, flecked with foam from the falls whose wash came tremulously through the wilderness. The sky overhead was translucent with the half light of sunset and he felt a delicious languor stealing over him. For three hours Stoughton, Riggs and he had fished to their hearts' content, while Birch climbed a ridge and speculated what such a forbidding country might reasonably be expected to bring forth. Close by the stream, Fisette bent beside a small fire from which came odors of fried bacon and fish that aroused in the Philadelphians a fierce and gnawing hunger. Presently they sat on a mattress of cedar and ate one of those suppers the memory of which passes not with the years. It was Riggs who spoke first, lying back on the boughs, his head on his arm, a new glow in his pale cheeks. He looked younger and rounder than he did six hours previously, and, stretching luxuriously, he experienced the sympathetic impulses that detach themselves from a full stomach.

"I suppose there's no way out of it?"

"None whatever," grunted Stoughton, who was lining his basket with moss and objected to being thus recalled. "What the devil has this to do with dividends?"

"Nothing, I admit, but why in thunder did we start this game anyway? Why couldn't we just take things easy and go fishing. We've all got enough."

Wimperley stretched his arms above his head in delicious fatigue. "Keep away from second causes; this is no place for them. Four years ago you were meant to go fishing to-day in this very stream. Why worry about it?"

"I'm thinking about one R.F.C.," came back Riggs reflectively, "just like the rest of you."

"Well," sounded the dry voice of Birch, "so am I. And all this is very apropos. It illustrates the general condition of affairs, especially that mess of trout you had on the moss a while ago. We're all trout, we and the shareholders. You, Wimperley, are that five pounder. We all rose to the fly of one R.F.C., and we were all landed in the back woods. There are more trout in that stream, and, if we stand for it, the fishing is still good, but I've got the sting of the fly still in my gills. Also I'm thinking about one Henry Marsham."

Stoughton nodded sagely. "That's right, but if you liked fishing, Birch, you wouldn't drag in shareholders in that churlish fashion. What about blast furnaces, Riggs? We haven't heard a whisper yet. Wonder what Clark is thinking of?"

"Oh Lord!" murmured the little man, "if we only had iron!"

Fisette, who was dipping his dishes in a pot of hot water, turned his head ever so slightly. The others had either forgotten about him or concluded that their conversation was beyond a half-breed. But not a word had escaped the sharp ears of the man who moved so silently beside the fire. 'Iron!' They had iron, but apparently did not know it. Fisette felt in his pocket for the small angular fragment he always carried, and was about to hand it to Wimperley, when again he remembered Clark's command. He was to say nothing to any one. So the half-breed, with wonder in his soul, laid more wood on the fire and, squatting in the shadow of a rock, stared at the stream now shrouded in the gloom, and waited for what might come.

"But there's none in this damned country," blurted Stoughton, "so get back to Birch's picture of the shareholders on the moss."

"Trouble is I can't get away from it." Riggs' small voice was so plaintive that the others laughed, then dropped into a reverie while there came the murmur of the hidden stream and the small unceasing voices of the dusk that blend into the note which men call silence. Very softly and out of the south drifted a melodious sound.

"Six o'clock at the works," drawled Birch, snapping his watch. "Does that suggest anything?"

An hour later two buckboards drew up in front of the hotel and the four stepped down, a little stiff, but utterly content. As Riggs took his basket from Fisette, he coughed a little awkwardly.

"Look here, you fellows, I'm going to send my fish to R.F.C. with our compliments. It's only decent."

"Well," remarked Birch reflectively, "you might as well. It's the only compliment we're paying this trip."

A profound sleep strengthened their resolution, and when next morning Clark announced that he had arranged a trip up the lake, they acceded at once. In half an hour the company's big tug steamed out into Lake Superior, and the four, wrapped in big coats, for the water was like ice and the air chill, waited for the hour when Clark should run dry.

"You're going back this evening?" he said as the vessel rounded the long pine covered point that screened the rapids from the open lake.

Birch nodded.

"We'll get through by this afternoon. There isn't any more to show you." Clark spoke with a certain quick incisiveness and his eyes seemed unusually keen and bright.

"We've seen all we want to see."

The other man glanced at him sharply and said nothing. Then, as the big tug plowed on, the great expanse of Superior opened before them, a gigantic sheet of burnished glass edged with shadowy shores, and a long island whose soft outline seemed to float indistinctly on the unruffled water. As they steamed, Clark told them of the giant bark canoes that once came down from the lake heavy with fur, to unload at the Hudson Bay store at St. Marys, and disappear as silently as they came laden with colored cotton and Crimea muskets and lead and powder. He told of lonely voyageurs and the Jesuit priests who, traveling utterly alone, penetrated these wilds with sacrificial courage, carrying the blessed Sacrament to the scattered lodges of Sioux and Huron. Then, shifting abruptly, he talked of his own coming to St. Marys and the chance talk on a train that turned his attention to that Arcadia till, as the moments passed, he himself began to take on romantic proportions and appear in the imagination of his hearers as a sort of modern voyageur, who had discovered a new commercial kingdom.

"These logs," he said abruptly, "are from our limits."

The others glanced over the tug's high bows and saw nearing them a great brown raft towed by a small puffing vessel.

"Pulp wood,—ten thousand cords there. It doesn't take long to chew it up at the rate we're going. I want to speak to Baudette."

He motioned to the bridge and the big tug drew in slowly beside its smaller brother, while he talked to a brown-faced man who leaned over the rail and answered in monosyllables, his sharp eyes taking in the group behind the general manager. The tug sheered off and put on speed, while Wimperley and the rest held their breath as they skirted the straining boom that inclosed the raft. Presently the high, sharp bow turned shoreward, steam was cut off and the tug made fast to the sheer side of a little bluff that rose steeply out of deep water.

Clark stepped out on a narrow gang plank that just reached the land. "You fellows haven't seen this north country yet, and I'd like you to get something of it on foot. This is part of our concession secured from the provincial government and I want you to walk over just a little of it. As directors you ought to."

"Come on," said Wimperley under his breath. "It's the last chapter, he's nearly dry."

The trail was narrow and newly cut. Treading at first on smooth rock, the Philadelphians took it briskly, jumping over stones and logs and pausing now and then at vistas of the lake. They were a little short of breath when the path dipped to low ground and struck straight across a tangled ravine. Here the bush was thicker, and the air warm and moist. Gradually the four coats came off.

"Hold on a minute, Clark," panted Stoughton who was beginning to sweat.

"It's better over here, come along."

But if it was better they did not notice it. Wimperley stumbled over a root and plunged one hand up to the wrist in slimy mud. Riggs was breathing hard and his nostrils dilated, but he plugged doggedly on. Birch, now very red in the face, stepped close behind Stoughton, his cheeks stinging from the swish of branches released by the man just ahead. Stoughton, his heart pumping, was in the lead, and desperately trying to catch the steadily progressing figure of Clark. He felt almost like murder. Ten minutes more and the Philadelphians had lost all traces of refinement. Wimperley's trousers were torn at the knee and his white, scratched skin showed through. Riggs had dropped coat and waistcoat beside the trail, his collar was off, his small body tired and twisted, and from his lips streamed language to which he had long been a stranger. Birch had lagged far behind but plowed on with a cold determination. He was breathing audibly through his nose, his watch chain was dangling on a cedar branch a quarter of a mile back, a sharp pain throbbed in a barked shin and his boots were full of water. Still in the lead was Stoughton, who, regardless of all else, had put down his head and was crashing heavily through the underbrush like a young bull moose answering the call of his distant and amorous mate. Clark was quite invisible. Presently the four halted. Humanity had gone its limit. Birch dragged himself up and they stared at each other with furious eyes.

"Lend me a handkerchief," panted Riggs.

Stoughton felt in his pocket, pulling one out with a cascade of pine needles, when from three hundred feet ahead came a voice:

"I'm where we stop, you fellows, come on up."

"That's just where he is." Birch's difficult speech had something in it that was almost deadly. "He's asked for it and he's going to get it right here. Come on."

They trailed slowly up, a small, bedraggled, indecent procession, lost to everything except utter weariness and a spirit of cold revenge. In Stoughton's heavy heart was the thought that Clark had unexpectedly made their job vastly easier than they anticipated. The latter was on a little knoll that rose roundly from the encircling bush. He seemed cool and comfortable, and this stirred them to deeper anger. His features were expressionless, save that his lips twitched ever so slightly. The Philadelphians dropped and lay limply, and there was silence for perhaps five minutes when Birch lifted a haggard face and spoke.

"Look here, Clark, I don't know the reason for this fool expedition, none of us do, but it serves well enough to lead up to the point of other fool expeditions on a larger scale."

"Yes?" said Clark with a lift in his voice.

"It does. Now I'd like to go back about four years when you said that three millions would do you. In between now and then is a long story and I haven't got breath to tell it, but to-day you've had seven and we're deeper in the woods than ever we were."

"Go ahead, I'm following you."

"The long and the short of it is that we've had enough."

"Of me?" The voice was very quiet.

"Yes, damn it, of you; that is, in your present position of general manager. You can have one or two of the subsidiary companies but not the whole darn thing, and—"

"The point is," cut in Wimperley, "that we're afraid of you. We've not paid a dividend and, as things go, there's not any likelihood that we ever will. It's not easy to talk like this, and don't think we under-estimate what you've done. No other man I know of could have done it, but there's a limit to the money available in the State of Pennsylvania for this business—and we've reached it—that's all."

"And if you want to know what's upset the apple-cart," chirped Riggs with a little shiver—for they were all taking turns by now—"it's that fool proposal to build a railway through this ungodly wilderness." The little man glanced about him with visible abhorrence.

"And a blast furnace without any ore," concluded Stoughton heavily.

Clark's eyes wandered round the group while through his whole body ran a divine thrill. He had very swiftly interpreted the purpose of this official visit. The directors wanted to get rid of him but funked the job, and now he experienced a certain contempt for their helplessness. He had a vivid sense of the dramatic and this tramp had been carefully thought out. The opportunity was made and it was for them to use it. He drew a long breath, conscious that here was the moment which comes but seldom in the lives of men. It was only five years ago that, practically penniless, he had overheard a conversation in a train.

"Ore?" he said coolly without changing a muscle. "Why, you're sitting on five million tons of the best ore I ever saw."

A blue jay lit on a branch over his head and looked impudently down. No one spoke. Presently Wimperley scratched at the moss with his heel, bared a strip of rock and stared at it as though he had hurt it. Stoughton rolled over and shot side glances at Clark, whose eyes were fixed on the jagged horizon.

"What?" whispered Riggs.

"The discovery was made some days ago by one of our own prospectors, but I could not speak definitely until the various analyses were completed. It is excellent ore and will smelt well. There is limestone within two miles of the works. The coke, of course, will have to be brought up.'"

"I'll be damned!" murmured Stoughton in a voice husky with reverence.

The others spoke not at all, but peered blinkingly at Clark as though his recumbent body were hiding more wonders from them. Presently Wimperley, who knew something of ore, bent stiffly forward, picked up a fragment of rock and, after a long scrutiny, nodded slowly.

"This exposure is about half a mile long," said the quiet voice. "It crops out there and there," he pointed to neighboring ridges, "and there's more beyond that, if you'd care to walk over."

But no one cared. The Philadelphians were too lost in fatigue and astonishment. After a little Riggs commandeered the rest and the four began to roll back great blankets of moss, just as Fisette had done the week before, and everywhere beneath lay iron ore. Clark watched them with a suggestive smile till, after a little, Birch sat down panting, his hands stained with soil.

"Well?" he demanded, "how about it?"

"It was something more than three years ago that the first prospector went in," commenced Clark thoughtfully, "and I reported at the time that it was definitely stated by those who ought to know that there was no iron in the country. Geological maps showed the same thing, but it struck me there was too much guess work about them, so we began to make maps of our own. A month ago we got into iron formation and soon after came the discovery. I felt all along that the stuff was there, but could not say anything officially till the analyses were completed. We can lay this ore down at the workers for two dollars a ton. And now," he added in a voice that suddenly changed into sharp and rising tones, "do I get my blast furnace?"

The effect on the group was extraordinary. They had sat motionless, oblivious to fatigue and mosquitoes, while Clark spoke. Their brains were flooded with the knowledge that this meant ultimate permanence to the works. It meant rails and plates and all iron and steel products, and these were made doubly possible by the enormous reserve of power still available in the rapids at St. Marys. They glanced into the woods as though there were still mysterious treasures waiting to be revealed at a wave of the hand of this magician.

Presently Wimperley straightened up. He had been going through a strange searching of soul while his gaze wandered from the glistening rock at his feet to Clark's keen face. He began to perceive clearly for the first time the prodigious potentiality of this man who was equally masterful in Philadelphia and the back woods. He saw to what wide scope this enterprise could expand if only this restless and prophetic spirit might be wisely steered by men of colder brains and more deliberate resolution. But Clark, after all, was the creator.

"Yes," he said half aloud, "you get your blast furnace."

The Philadelphians took to the homeward trail with backward glances and something of regret lest the archaean foundations of that mountain of ore might shift over night. There was no sense of fatigue now. Birch skipped over logs in wayward abandon and laughed like a schoolboy when Clark picked a heavy gold watch chain that dangled from an overhanging bush. Riggs' thin legs were being scratched by the sharp samples with which he had stuffed his trouser pockets, but he felt them not, and Stoughton's choler had given way to a profound contemplation out of which he periodically breathed the conviction that he would be damned. Wimperley was already organizing a new company—an iron corporation—and hazarding shrewd guesses as to the effect this discovery would have on the outstanding stock. The result, he concluded, would be most inspiring.

They lunched on the tug, an admirable meal, while the vessel vibrated gently and through the open portholes came the swish of bubbling water and a flood of sunlight. Then Riggs made a little speech and they all drank Clark's health, promising him continued support and such money as he needed to make steel rails. The threatening specter of Marsham had vanished utterly.

The answer was characteristic. There was no mention of anything the speaker had contributed, but just the voicing of his unalterable faith in a country which so far had never failed to produce whatever the industry required. It was a pleasure for him to work for directors and shareholders who had so practically demonstrated their confidence. He said this with a smile which was absolutely undecipherable, then drank their health in water which was his only drink—-declined one of Wimperley's cigars, for he did not smoke—and inquired quietly if he was to get his railway as well. Whereupon he was immediately assured that he would get anything he asked for.

That evening the Philadelphians left in the private car. They were rather quiet, being caught up in contemplation of a new vision. As the train pulled out Clark waved a hand to the group on the rear platform and returned thoughtfully to the blockhouse where he began to write. The letter was to his mother. He told her that he had been too busy for correspondence of late, and had just concluded a very satisfactory and official visit from his directors. In consequence, he would now be busier than ever. He stared at his own signature for a moment, then opened a window and stood peering out toward the river. The moon was up, and he caught the snowy gleam of foam at the foot of the rapids. Their voice seemed very clear and very triumphant that night. They sang of providence—or was it destiny?

His mind turned reflectively to Elsie Worden, experiencing as yet no thrill but just a growing and satisfying attraction. All things seemed possible tonight. He had never given much thought to women, being impatient with what seemed to him their artifice and slight power of insight. So often the women who were esteemed most praiseworthy, were also the least intelligent, and lacked that spark which to him signified vision. In past years he had had a rooted belief that the standard wife was a burden who not only robbed one of mobility, but also demanded her portion of all moments, however individual, absorbed or tense they might be. In such circumstances there was nothing around which he could build a mental fence and call it his own.

It is possible that in such periods as these, when Clark gave himself up to taking soundings, as it were, in the sea of his destiny, he distinguished in his own nature that curious duality of sex which makes it possible for certain rare individuals to self satisfy their emotional appetites, and that it was this which had kept him single and unfettered. If he had a craving he could forthwith produce that which appeased it. He luxuriated in the revelations of his own perception. To him the inarticulate thing became vocal with possibilities. He was conscious of no unsatisfied need. And yet, for all of this, the vision of the girl, Elsie, began to blend with his thoughts.



XII.—LOVE AND DOUBT

Some three months later Belding was walking slowly down the main street of St. Marys. He felt fagged and the sun was hot. Just as he reached the Dibbotts' white gate he heard a clear voice from behind the clump of azaleas that screened the cottage from the road.

"Come in, Mr. Belding."

He lifted the latch and saw Mrs. Dibbott in a white dress on the porch. She seemed cool and restful.

"Sit down here. My, but you look tired!"

"I am," he admitted, mopping his face.

"Then sit where you are and have some elderberry wine and cookies. They're right from the oven."

He sighed with relief and began to munch contentedly. He had not known how tired he was, and Mrs. Dibbott's cookies were famous.

"You look played out," she went on sympathetically. "How's Elsie Worden?"

"Well. But I don't see very much of her nowadays."

"Why?"

"Work." His brain was fermenting with half completed plans and calculations. He might as well lay it to that.

"Well, why don't you two get married? You will be old before your time."

Belding shook his head. "It takes two to make a bargain."

"But it doesn't take long." Mrs. Dibbott put down her crochet work. "Don't you think your friend Mr. Clark depends just a little too much on individuals—I include himself in that?"

"Perhaps, but it didn't occur to me. At any rate we have a one man concern."

"And if anything happened to him, what then?" Mrs. Dibbott's eyes were bright with inquiry. "And suppose you break down, what about Elsie?"

"Elsie wouldn't be affected," he said slowly.

"Then you two are not engaged?"

"I thought we would be by this time but I guessed wrong."

Mrs. Dibbott was full of sympathy. "I suppose it serves me right for poking my nose into other people's business. My, but I'm sorry! What's the matter with Elsie?"

"Nothing."

"Then with you?"

"Nothing."

"May an old woman make a fool of herself?"

"Please—but it won't be that."

"Then has Elsie found some one else—if you don't mind my asking?"

"Possibly,—I can't say."

"But you're the only man in town who takes her anywhere. The judge is fond of you, he told me so, and Mrs. Worden thinks you are the whole world. What's the matter, Jimmy?"

Belding got rather red. "I'm afraid I can't say."

Mrs. Dibbott's eyebrows went up, then she leaned over and patted his hand. "Whoever it is you'll knock him out. Sorry I did make a fool of myself, but it's my fixed belief that you come first with Elsie, though perhaps she doesn't know it."

Belding laughed in spite of himself. "She certainly doesn't know it yet."

"Now tell me about the iron works."

"It will be a couple of years before they are finished." Belding's brain began to throb once more. In imagination he was putting up blast furnaces.

"It will mean a good deal for the town, won't it?"

He nodded. "The biggest thing yet—St. Marys is all right now."

"And it was that dirty old Fisette who found the mine?"

Belding chuckled. "He's not old nor dirty, and was the best prospector of the lot. Yes, he found it."

"Goodness! were there many of them?"

"About twenty. They all worked in different districts and knew nothing about each other."

"Then that's what brought that special train load up from Philadelphia?"

"I suppose so. They seemed very happy when they left."

Mrs. Dibbott poured out some more elderberry wine. "When I think what that man has done just out of water, it makes me gasp. I switch on the light and don't trim any more lamp wicks, and the well's gone dry and I don't care, and Mr. Filmer told me last night there are eight thousand more people in St. Mary's. Do you remember that meeting?"

"Every word of it."

"And Mr. Manson—he was a wet blanket, wasn't he?"

"But he was snowed under, fortunately."

"I know he was, but did you hear that he has made a fortune out of real estate, and is going round with a face as long as his back?"

Belding knew nothing about Manson—he had been too busy.

"Every one says he's in the dumps because he sold out just before Fisette found that mine and real estate has been jumping ever since."

"But he never believed in Mr. Clark."

"Some of him does and some of him doesn't," said Mrs. Dibbott sagely.

"How much did he make?" Belding was wiser with other people's money than with his own.

"They say twenty-five thousand and," she added enigmatically, "I'm sorry for his wife."

The engineer laughed, said good-by and turned toward the Worden house.

At the sound of his step in the garden Elsie looked up, a provocative smile on her face. She was so dainty, so desirable, that he felt a swift hunger throbbing even to his finger tips. She made room for him on the bench.

"I'm for Mother Earth." He stretched himself at her feet. "Where have you been lately, we've missed you at the works."

"I've just got back, been away for two weeks. Are you still very busy?"

He nodded, but business was not what he wanted to talk about. It was more than two years now since they first met and he had a feeling that all that time he had been an open book to her bright eyes.

"Don't let us talk business," he said a little unsteadily.

She swung her large straw hat by its silk ribbons. "You shall choose your own subject."

"It isn't business, it's you," he went on bluntly. "I've tried to tell you before but you wouldn't let me."

"It's a heavenly evening for a proposal."

"Do you mean that?" he gasped.

"Why shouldn't I? The moon is just coming up and the river is quiet and we can hear the rapids, and here you are at my feet. What more could a girl ask?"

Something twitched at Belding's fancy. "Then I love you and I want you desperately and I'll take care of you all my life. Is there any one else?"

His voice sobered her. "Don't, you mustn't say it like that, it sounds too real."

"But it is real," he protested, "the most real thing I ever said."

"You mustn't," she answered a little shakily. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have gone on like that."

Belding captured her hand. "I'm glad you did, Elsie, it was just right."

"But I didn't mean it," she said pitifully, "and it wasn't fair of me. I didn't know you felt like that."

Belding stared at her astonished. "You must have known."

"Then possibly I did,—I wasn't sure. I—I didn't think of it much, but, Jimmy, I don't want to be married just now. You've been splendid ever since we met—and really I didn't want you to say what you did."

"Perhaps not in the way I said it." Belding's face became suddenly rigid. "And perhaps now I know why. You see it's hard for me to compete with my own chief," he added grimly.

"That's not fair," she burst out, her cheeks flaming. "If you really cared you wouldn't say it."

"I only want to know where I stand," he replied with sudden dignity. "If you'll tell me that, I will be satisfied—for to-night."

Her mood changed in a flash. "That sounds better, but, Jimmy, must you know to-night? It's hard for me to tell you."

"Why?" he demanded. He wanted his answer, fraught with whatever fate.

"Because I don't just know myself," she said softly. "I wonder if I can explain. I am fond of you, Jimmy, more than you know, but I want to be fair to you and I want to be fair to myself as well. Have you never been in a state in which you were conscious that the world was full of things you had dreamed of but never expected to find actually?"

He stared at her with the swift intuition that there had been a season not long ago when he felt just like this. But now he was getting used to it.

"Yes," his voice was quite steady, "I know what you mean."

"It's that way with me now, and I'm just finding out about myself." Her eyes were fixed on the white line of the rapids. "I don't know what sort of a woman I'm going to be,—that sounds queer but it's true. I'm going to want something more than love," she added under her breath.

Belding did not stir and there drifted down to them the deep, hollow monotone that pervades St. Marys when the wind comes in from the west. The young man scanned the innumerable lights beside the rapids,—he could place each one of them. Then slowly the moon came up with a soft gleam that laid a silver path across the river and touched the girl into an unearthly beauty.

"I want you, Elsie," he pleaded.

She looked at him with eyes like stars. "Perhaps I want you, Jimmy," she breathed, "but I don't know yet. Supposing I said 'yes' and then it was all wrong—for each of us?"

"You said you asked for more than love; perhaps I have no more—in your mind."

Clark's name was hammering in his brain, but he kept it down.

Followed a little silence. "Do you want to do something for me?" she said presently. Her lips were tremulous.

"I've always wanted that."

"Then give me time to find myself—I'm trying hard now."

Belding moved restlessly. "I'm afraid that some one else will find you."

She glanced at him startled. "If that happens, Jimmy, it means that I haven't spoilt your life."

"I want you to spoil it."

"You haven't answered my question; will you give me time?"

Belding got up, put his hands on her slim straight shoulders and stared into the beautiful, troubled face.

"Elsie, if any one else does come between us—"

She was seized with strange and sudden fear. "No, no, you don't know what you are saying."

He relented instantly. "I'm sorry, I was talking nonsense. Now I've got to go and see the bishop about the new church—won't you come?"

The shadow passed from her eyes. "Yes, I'd love to see him, if you won't get on that subject again."

"What subject?"

"You know," she laughed, once more light hearted.

"I promise, but for to-day only."

They walked slowly down the long straight street that led past Filmer's house, which was surrounded by trees, and reached the corner where Fisette's cottage marked the turn up to the bishop's residence. Fisette was on his front doorstep with small people around him, and waved gayly as they passed.

"He's very happy now, isn't he?" said Elsie.

Belding nodded. He found it hard to join in the happiness of another man whose children's arms were about his neck. Elsie's eyes turned to the figure of the bishop, who was on his wide veranda, a large straw hat on the back of his head. Manuscript lay on the floor beside him but at the moment he was absorbed in a large green leaf that spread across his knees. It was piled with strawberries. As the gate clicked he signaled hospitably.

"Come along, children—just in time. Mr. Belding, can you pick fruit by moonlight? Elsie, come here and talk to me. To tell the truth I wasn't thinking just now of any of my flock, but I'd much sooner see a lamb like you than some of the old ewes who will always insist on being serious and respectful. What you observe on the floor is a book I would have written if I'd not been a bishop." He rambled on till Belding reappeared with a hat full of berries.

"Here they are, sir, and I've got another offering as well."

"You don't say so, what is it?"

"Do you remember, a year or so ago, talking to me about a pro-cathedral?"

"Very distinctly. But I was afraid that the press of work had made the thing impossible so far as you were concerned, so I let the matter stand."

"Well, it isn't impossible, and that church is going to be built."

The bishop drew a long breath. "I am delighted to hear it, because I haven't got any money yet. It has all gone in salaries of missionaries, and your friend Mr. Clark has put me to a lot of extra expense. I knew he would the minute I saw him."

"But this church," said Belding with a little lift in his voice, "is going to be built without money. Peterson, the masonry contractor at the works, will give the stone, and his masons will donate the labor. Borthwick, another contractor, will give the lumber and his carpenters will put it together. Windows—plain glass of course—and the various fittings are all taken care of by different people, and there was just one thing I found a little difficult, and now that's all right."

"And what was it?" The bishop was leaning forward, his large, expressive eyes very bright.

"Cement, sir. No one seemed to have any to spare. Finally I went to Ryan—I don't know whether he has met you."

"Yes, an excellent type—one of my own countrymen. I like Ryan, a strong Romanist, isn't he?"

"Yes, but finally I ran him down and told him I wanted enough cement to build a Protestant church."

"But—-"

"But, listen! Ryan thought it over for a minute, then his eyes began to twinkle and he pointed to his storehouse and said that if it would cement the Protestant church together I might take the pile."

Elsie laughed, while the bishop relapsed into deep body-shaking mirth.

"Splendid! Fine chap that Ryan. He's from Maynooth and I'm from Lurgan and who says the Irish don't hang together? So it's all settled?"

"Yes, when can we start work?"

"At once if it's possible. How long will it take?"

"Three months would finish it. The job will be swarming with men."

"Good, and we hope that Ryan's cement will hold the church together. I'm reminded of another Romanist friend who was approached for a similar Protestant object. He wouldn't help to build the new church but he did contribute toward tearing down the old one. And now," here this good and kindly man paused and looked affectionately at the two young people beside him, "it's my turn to make a suggestion."

Elsie glanced up with uncomfortable intelligence.

"I'd like the first wedding in the new church to be yours if possible. And if you like, I'll officiate myself." He patted the girl's hand softly.

"That's dear of you," she stammered, "but—it's a long way off."

The bishop looked up sharply and saw that Belding's eyes were fixed on Fisette's cottage. "By the way, how's my friend Mr. Clark?" he put in hastily.

Belding smiled, "Working too hard, as usual."

"And working every one else, especially you. Well, I assume that's his way. I'd like you to tell him that we're building a new church because he did not seem to care for the other one."

"Does that fall within the office of an engineer?" said Belding doubtfully.

"Unquestionably. Your profession does many different things by many different methods. By the way, I hear we are to have iron works in St. Marys."

"Yes, thanks to Fisette."

"It's some years since Mr. Clark told me he had reason to believe there was iron in the district. Now I hope that this prophet will have honor in his own country."

A few minutes later the young people rose to go. The bishop followed them to the gate, and Elsie felt the benediction of his kiss on her forehead. He watched them from his veranda till, with something of a sigh, he collected the manuscript at his feet, put it away and turned to next Sunday's sermon. He looked at this thoughtfully, then walking slowly into his study laid it also away. His face was suddenly careworn. He felt unduly oppressed by the burdens of his office, and there came back on him, as it often did, like a flood, the consciousness that it was for him by personal effort to raise half the money needed to pay his forty missionaries. Should he fail, they went without. Constantly aware of their simple faith, he knew also that they were poorly fed and lacked any provision for old age.

Involuntarily he began to compare their lot with that of the magnetic Clark, and was confronted with an eternal problem. Why should faith and sacrificial loyalty fare so much more poorly than the mechanical and constructive nature? Clark had, apparently, the world at his feet, but what comfort and security was there for brave and spiritual souls, and for what baffling reason were they robbed of present reward?

He pondered this deeply, and, raising his troubled eyes, looked fixedly at a large print of the Sistine Madonna that hung on the study wall just opposite his desk. As he gazed at its ineffable tenderness there came to him a slow surcease of strain. Flotsam and jetsam of eternity they might all be, his missionaries and Clark and himself, but underneath were the ever-lasting arms, on which,—and he thanked God for this,—some had already learned to lean. There flashed into his mind his own arrival at St. Marys, the northern center of his vast diocese; the joy with which the neighboring Indian tribes had welcomed him and the name "The Rising Sun" which they had forthwith given him. They had looked forward, they said, to his coming as to morning after the darkness of night. The reflection grew in his mind and brought with it hope and renewed courage.



XIII.—THE VOICE OF THE RAPIDS

It fell on a morning that Clark, sitting at his desk, felt within him that strange stirring to which he had long since learned to give heed, it being his habit at such moments to leave the works and resign himself completely to these subtle processes. He now walked slowly across toward the river, and seated himself where, years before, he had watched the triumphant kingfisher. The place had a peculiar fascination for him, and had by his orders been kept in its pristine wildness. Half a mile away the pulp mill was grinding dully, on the upper reaches of the great bay circular saws were ripping into logs fresh from Baudette's operations on the Magwa River, and seventy miles up the river a large crew was shipping and excavating at the iron mine. These things and many others being on foot, Clark had experienced that intellectual restlessness which in him was the precursor of further effort.

Listening to the boom of the river he reflected that the water he had diverted to his own purposes was but a fraction of the whole mighty torrent racing in front of him. Into the scant half mile between shore and shore was forced the escaping flood of the mighty Superior, and such was the compression that, midway, the torrent heaped itself up into a low ridge of broken plunging crests. Just over the ridge he could see the opposite shore line. It did not occur to him, as it would to many, how puny were the greatest efforts of man beside this prodigious mass. The manner of his mind was, too objective. The sight of the United States so close at hand only suggested that in the country from which he came he had as yet made no physical mark. There was the town with the rapids close beside it, just as in Canada. More and more the inward stirring captured him. Why should he not create in his own land what he had already created in Canada?

The idea was stimulating, and very carefully he reviewed the situation as it there existed. His supporters were keen men in Philadelphia and the unexpected announcement of Fisette's discovery had electrified the market. Shares in all the allied companies touched hitherto unreached values. The more he thought the more he luxuriated in this new sweep of imagination, while intermittently there came to him the dull boom of blasting at the works.

Presently his mind turned to money and personal wealth. He had never given it much thought, and only seriously considered money in terms of what it could accomplish. Now he was receiving a very large salary and had, as well, holdings in shares of the various companies. He dwelt on the fact for a while, not that he had ever aimed at riches, but because his financial position was infinitely better than ever before. It would be easy, he reflected, to sell out, retire and live at ease. He chuckled audibly at the picture, realizing that if he stopped work he would die of a strangulated spirit.

Presently as he listened it seemed that the rapids took on a new pitch. He had remarked before that, varying with the direction of the wind, their call was not always in one great thundering diapason but sometimes in a gigantic hubbub made up, as it were, of the confused blending of many notes. Now, he imagined, he could discern them all—querulous, angry, contented, pleading, defiant, threatening and triumphant, and he perceived in them but the echo of changing human moods. To-day he distinguished chiefly a voice that was dominant and imperative.

Still in profound contemplation he surveyed the rapids' gigantic sweep, the proud and tossing billows shot through with sunlight and vibrant with speed. He made out those smooth and glistening emerald cellars into which the flashing river pitched to rise again in tossing crests. He followed back through the icy depths of the great lake stretching westward to hidden swamps in that vast wilderness where these waters were born, and shouting rivers down which they poured through silent pools and over leaping cataracts to Superior. He saw still another river that, growing in power and majesty, moved royally past the cities of men, healing, sustaining and inspiring. And, last of all, he perceived these waters of half a continent blend silently with the brackish tides and lose themselves in the eternal sea.

This translation of vision moved him profoundly, for it was the nature of his remote personality to be stirred more deeply by the revelations of his own soul than by anything extraneous to its strange reactions. Then gradually the voice of the river resolved itself into one clear and unmistakable summons. "Use me while you may. I shall flow on forever, while you have but a moment in eternity."

And this satisfied him.

He got up and walked slowly back, plunged in thought, but not of those who passed and touched their hats and to whom he was the personification of power. There was in his mind the talk he had with Wimperley, a few months before. "We're in your hands," he had said, "but there's a limit to what we can raise. Push on with work and don't forget about dividends."

Remembering it, Clark smiled. The dividends might be delayed a year or so, but when they came it would be in a flood like the rapids. At his office he found a telegram from the purchasing agent in the United States. Blast furnaces were under way, and, he reported, he had secured an option on a rail mill. It was not new, but could be had at once. To dismantle and reerect would save six months as against the time required to build a new one. This purchase would also save hundreds of thousands of dollars.

He pondered for some time, with Wimperley's remarks about dividends keeping up an irritating onslaught. He was aware in a strange but quite unmistakable way that this decision now to be made was in a quite positive sense more momentous than appeared on the surface. He hung over it, balancing the advantages of a new mill against a definite saving. It was not the sum about which he hesitated, but a touch of uncertainty as to just how much capital Wimperley and the rest could actually provide. Then suddenly he decided to be economical, even though a secondhand mill had obvious weaknesses.

In the next moment he rang for Belding. The engineer answered with a weariness daily becoming more settled, and which was only relieved by the spontaneous loyalty he had from the first conceived for his chief. Of late he never entered Clark's office without anticipating some addition to burdens he had already determined were too heavy for his young shoulders. But now, too, as always, he had no sooner closed the door and caught the extraordinary power in Clark's eyes than he was caught up in the grip of his chief's confidence and felt ready for the effort.

"You know the ground on the other side of the river?"

"Yes, sir."

"I wish you would take a look over it very quietly and bring me a town map on which you have indicated the cheapest possible route for another power canal."

"Another canal!" said Belding involuntarily.

"It's important that it should be the cheapest possible," went on Clark, apparently without hearing, "and you'll have to balance up the material to be excavated by a longer route against the cost of more improved land by one that is more direct."

"How much power is required?" The question came dully.

"Not less than thirty thousand. I'm going to make carbide. At least," he added with a short laugh, "if I don't, some one else will."

Belding drew a long breath. He had a swift and discomforting conviction that this man, whom he felt forced to admire, was going too fast. Around him were all the evidences that he had not gone too fast and there seemed to be unlimited support behind him. But yet—

The engineer grew very red in the face. "Do you think that's wise, sir?" he said with a tremendous effort.

Clark glanced up in astonishment and his expression grew rigid. "Just what do you mean, Belding?"

"I am sorry, sir. I know it sounds impertinent but I've a rotten feeling that things—that things—" He broke off in distress.

"I'll trouble you to finish your sentence." The voice was like ice.

"Don't misunderstand me," the young man went valiantly on. "It isn't for myself, it's for you."

"Why me?" Clark's glance softened ever so little at the thought.

"New schemes are piling up every day. We're not out of one before we're into another."

"We?" The voice had a touch of irony.

"Yes, sir, we—because I'm with you to the end, whatever that may be. I don't care if I go to smash and lose my job, but what about you? I don't want to be disrespectful, but if this company fails it's you that will have failed. I won't count except to myself. You're doing more now than ten ordinary men. Isn't there enough without that?" Belding pointed across the river.

Then, to the young man's amazement, Clark began to laugh, not riotously but with a gradual abandonment that shook his thickset body with successive convulsions of mirth. Presently he wiped his eyes.

"Sit down, Belding, but first of all, thank you from the bottom of my heart. You make a brilliant contrast with a group I know who had to bolster themselves up for days to get courage to say something of the same kind, and they were thinking of their own skins, not mine. Now I want to tell you something."

Belding nodded. His brain was too confused for speech.

"It really doesn't matter about me. Long ago I decided that I was meant for a certain purpose in this world. I'm trying to carry it out. I may reach it here—or elsewhere, frankly I don't know. But all I do know is that there are certain things here that I was meant to tackle and this new canal is one of them. If I go to smash it was intended that I smash, and that doesn't worry me a bit. I'm not working for myself, or even in a definite way for my shareholders, but I'm trying to adapt the forces and resources of nature to the use of man. Don't you see?"

"I think so." Belding began to perceive that he was caught up as a small unit in a great forward movement that encompassed not only himself but thousands of others.

"So once again, thank you for what you said. It was a bit of a job, wasn't it?"

"The toughest thing I ever tackled."

Clark's eyes twinkled with amusement. "I know it. Now, remember I don't want advice and if I smash—and I really won't smash—I don't want sympathy. It's the kind of balm I've no use for. Some people are so hungry for sympathy that they forget their jobs. And, Belding!"

"Yes, sir."

"I'm going to see you through, remember that. Now make me that map, and," he concluded with a provocative drawl, "don't forget how fortunate it is for you and me that water runs down hill."

Belding's mind was in a whirl. "There's one other thing," he said, "I've promised to build a cathedral for the bishop. Peterson has given the stone and—"

"I told him to," broke in Clark; "couldn't you guess that? He spoke to me about it. But understand that neither the bishop nor any one else must know it. I told them all except Ryan, and I didn't like to tread on his religious toes."

Belding laughed. "I should have guessed it. The thing was too easy, and Ryan came up to the scratch with the rest."

In September the pro-cathedral was completed. Belding, faithful to his trust, had made almost daily visits of inspection, when he often found the bishop seated on a half-cut stone and talking with evident interest to the workmen. It seemed that the big man's presence pushed the work along at top speed. On one occasion, a few days before the opening ceremony, the engineer was watching a mason laying the machicolated coping on the tower when the trowel slipped and dropped forty feet to the ground. Instantly there arose a stream of profanity from the top of that sacred edifice. Came a chuckle at Belding's shoulder.

"Unquestionably the effect of Ryan's cement, but it's going to hold our church together."

Glancing down, the mason caught sight of the black coated figure. His profanity ceased abruptly.

"Will you please throw me up that trowel, sir?"

The bishop laughed and the trowel gyrated skywards. "It makes me think of all that goes into the making of a church nowadays," he said thoughtfully. "By the way I wonder if my friend Mr. Clark will turn up next Sunday."

And Clark, to every one's surprise, did turn up, after most of St. Marys had seated themselves in the new oak pews. There was Dibbott, in carefully pressed light gray trousers, white waistcoat and a red flower in his buttonhole; Mrs. Dibbott in spotless linen, for the day was warm. Then the Bowers, the husband with his metropolitan manner acquired on frequent business trips to Philadelphia and converse with city capitalists, his wife in silk and a New York hat, at which Mrs. Dibbott glanced with somewhat startled eyes. Things had gone well with the Bowers. There were the Wordens, with Elsie and Belding, the latter accepting whispered congratulations on his work but wanting only a look which he could not draw from the girl beside him. Filmer was there, his black whiskers unusually glossy. He pulled at them caressingly and now and again cleared his throat, for he was to sing the tenor solo. At the door, Manson hung about till old Dibbott, glaring amiably down the isle, marched out and dragged the chief constable and his wife to a front seat. And last of all came Clark, who, slipping into a back corner, refused to move. Then the old bell ceased swinging in the new stone tower and the service began.

It was all very simple and touching. Filmer's melodious tenor never sounded better and the bishop's talk was straight to the point. This pro-cathedral, built out of love and faith, he told them, linked the old days with the new. The labor of many, freely given, had gone into it—here his kindly gaze dwelt for an instant on the gray-coated figure in the corner—and it augured well for the future. From this building must spread the doctrine of charity and fellowship and courage.

It was but for a few moments that he spoke, and when it was all over the old bell rang joyously as though for a wedding. Belding tried to catch Elsie's glance, but she only flushed and watched the majestic figure of the bishop retire into the little vestry. He had a despondent impression that an impalpable barrier lay between them. On the way out they met Clark and the girl's eyes brightened miraculously.

"Isn't it a charming church?" she said.

Clark nodded. "It's very pretty. St. Marys owes a good deal to Mr. Belding for this."

"He made the plans, I know, but think of all the people who gave the labor and the things to build it with."

Belding was about to blurt out that it was Clark who gave the things to build it with, but a swift signal imposed silence.

"I know, it's excellent. You have not been at the works lately."

"I was there last week."

"And I was in Philadelphia. I'm sorry."

She said good-by and, with Belding at her side, turned homeward, Clark looked after them curiously, his eyes half closing as though to hide a question that moved in their baffling depths.

The congregation dispersed slowly with the conviction that there had been created one of those memories to which in later years the reflective mind delights to return. Quite naturally, and as they often did, Mrs. Manson and Mrs. Bowers dropped into the Dibbott house with its mistress. Dibbott was already there. He was about to start on one of his official journeys, and just now was rooting things out of a back cupboard with explosive energy.

"Well," said Mrs. Bowers, folding her large, capable hands, "wasn't it lovely?"

The rumble of a street car sounded outside. "It revives old times," Mrs. Manson said softly, "but I don't believe we've changed much. We're too bred in the bone."

"Do we want the old times back?" asked Mrs. Bowers, to whom the past years had been kind.

"For some things, yes, and for others, no. Living's a great deal more expensive, and my husband's income is just the same," put in Mrs. Dibbott after a pause. "Taxes are up, and I'm not any happier though I suppose I'm better informed. John won't sell the place though he has been offered a perfectly splendid price, and it's noisy—but I like it, and there's the garden. Things don't happen to me—they just happen round me."

"And you, my dear," continued Mrs. Bowers with an inquisitive glance at the chief constable's wife, "what about you? Your husband's supposed to have done better than any one except Mr. Filmer."

The little woman flushed. She was perfectly aware that Manson was credited with making his fortune, and perhaps he had. But she had no knowledge of it. For a while she knew he was dealing in property, and then one morning he told her he had sold out. Her heart leaped at the news, for Manson in the past year or so had changed. Invariably austere, he had been nevertheless kind and considerate—but soon after the real estate venture ended he became only austere, to which there was added something almost like apprehension. And this in her husband was to her of intense concern.

"I can't say," she began a little timidly. "Peter has been telling me for months he's going to resign and live at ease, but it's always a matter of waiting just a little longer. I can't help longing for the old days. Perhaps there was less comfort but—" she added pathetically, "there was also less restlessness. I suppose I'm out of date."

"Did you see Mr. Clark to-day?" broke in Mrs. Dibbott, changing the subject with swift intuition.

"Yes, the first time he has been in church."

"He's not interested in us," announced Mrs. Bowers, with the manner of one who delivers an axiom, "not a little bit. St. Marys happens to be the town near the works, and we happen to be the people in it, that's all."

Mrs. Dibbott's flexible fingers curved and met. "Why should he be? We haven't done anything for him, except allow him to shoulder the town debt. And there isn't a woman alive who means anything to him, in one sense. He's in love—but with his work. There's no room for one of us, and, if he had a wife we'd only discuss her like a lot of cats. Let's be honest—you both know we would."

The others laughed and went their way, Mrs. Bowers to the big house near the station. It had a new porch and an iron fence and was freshly painted. In former days it never suggested personal resources as it did now. A little later Mrs. Manson turned into the gravel walk that led to the small stone annex of the big stone jail. Instead of going upstairs, she stopped at her husband's office and knocked, as she always did.

"Come in," boomed a deep voice.

Manson was at his desk and still in his Sunday best. He had taken the flower out of his buttonhole and laid it on a printed notice of the next assize court. She stood looking at him, their faces almost level—such was his great bulk.

"Peter," she said gravely, "I want to talk to you."

Something in her manner impressed him and he pushed back his chair. "What is it?"

"We don't seem to have much time to talk nowadays."

"There's no reason we shouldn't."

"That's just it—but we don't. Now I want to ask you something and, Peter, you mustn't put me off—as you always do.

"It's about ourselves," she went on, with a long breath, "but principally about you—and it concerns the children. Everything's changed and you're not what you used to be and something has come between us. I don't feel any more that we're the most important things in your life—as I used to."

He shook his head grimly. "You're all more important than ever, if you only knew it." Manson had a faint sense of injustice. It was for them he was wading through depths of anxiety. "You're shortly going to get the surprise of your life," he added with a note of triumphant conviction.

"Is it money?" she said slowly.

He nodded. "Yes, a pile of it."

"I don't want any more money, Peter, I'd sooner have you." The little woman's voice was very pleading.

"Look here, Barbara," he exploded, "I've made nearly thirty thousand dollars out of real estate. I got the money, you understand, but the game was too stiff and took too much time, so I put that and what else I could raise into stock—in Toronto. I've already made twenty thousand more, that's fifty, and the last twenty was without any effort or time on my part. I've only got to leave it alone for another year, and I'll pull out with an even hundred thousand and retire and devote the rest of my time to you and the children. Isn't that fair enough?"

"Do you say that you have already made fifty thousand dollars?" She was staring at him with startled and incredulous eyes. The sum staggered her.

"Yes," he chuckled contentedly.

She put her arms around his neck. "Then, Peter," she implored, "stop now. It's enough—it's marvelously more than I ever dreamed of. Oh! we can be so happy."

He shook his head. "I've set my mind on the even hundred. Can't you stand another year of it?"

"I can, but not you," she implored. "You don't know how you've changed. Peter, I beg you."

"I've got to leave that fifty where it is to make the next," he said with slow stubbornness. "I'll be the only man in St. Marys who was wise enough to make hay when the sun shone. You needn't be frightened for me."

"I'm frightened for myself," she answered shakily. "Won't you do what I ask? Sometimes," she ventured with delicate courage, "sometimes a woman can see furthest—though she doesn't know why."

"A year from to-day you'll thank me for sticking it out," came back Manson stolidly.

"And if it shouldn't turn out as you expect," she replied with a look that was at once sudden and profound, "you'll remember that I begged and you refused."

The door closed noiselessly behind her and Manson stared at his desk with a queer sense of discomfort. Consolidated stock had moved up buoyantly on the news of the discovery of iron, and he had established for himself with his Toronto brokers the reputation of a shrewd operator who worked on the strength of inside information. In front of him were Toronto letters asking that his agent be kept informed of developments at St. Marys. It pleased him that this had been achieved outside his own town and without its knowledge, and he saw himself a man who was vastly underestimated by his fellow citizens. But in spite of it all he was daily more conscious of a worm of uncertainty that gnawed in his brain. The thing was safe, obviously and demonstrably safe. Against his thousands others had invested millions with which to buttress the whole gigantic concern. And yet—!



XIV.—AN ANCIENT ARISTOCRAT VISITS THE WORKS

On a sunshiny day twelve miles down the river at the Indian settlement, old Chief Shingwauk, known in English as the Pine Tree, put on his best beaded caribou-skin moccasins and, motioning to his wife, moved slowly toward the shore where a small bark canoe nestled in the long reeds. A few moments later they slid silently up stream, the aged crone kneeling in the bow, a red shawl enveloping head and shoulders, her thin and bony arms wielding a narrow paddle with smooth agility. In the stern squatted Shingwauk, his dark eyes deep in thought.

Slowly they pushed up current, pausing now and again to peer unspeaking into the woods, every ancient instinct still alive, though ninety years had passed since the old man and his wife were unstrapped from the stiff board cradles in which they once swung mummy-like in long forgotten camps. Shingwauk, his broad blade winnowing the clear water, reflected that this journey had been contemplated for many months, since first he heard that strange things were being done at the big white water, and now it was well to see for himself, for the time was approaching when he would not see anything any more.

It was years since he had been at St. Marys and he was very old, so he worked up stream carefully, skirting close to the shore in the back water, hugging every point and sheering not at all into the strong current of midstream. Thus for hours the canoe floated like a dry leaf in the unruffled corner of a hidden pool, and in it the ancient pair, dry themselves with the searching seasons of nearly a hundred years.

For five hours they paddled, then the last bend in the river and St. Marys lay three miles ahead. Naqua, in the bow, reached up a withered hand, caught at an overhanging branch and their old eyes took in a scene familiar but yet strange. The sky line had changed, and up where the big white water crossed the river like a flat bar there was cause for wonderment.

Presently Shingwauk tapped the thwart with the haft of his paddle and they glided on, past the lower end of the town with its new houses and gardens, past a street car that moved like a noisy miracle with nothing to pull it, being evidently animated by some devil enchained, past Filmer's dock where years before Shingwauk and Naqua used to bring mink and otter and marten for trade; past other docks newer and larger and a town bigger than anything they had ever conceived, and opposite which sharp-nosed devil boats darted about or swung at anchor, across the deep bay that lay between the town and the big white water, till finally they floated near the block-house and Shingwauk's eyes, gazing profoundly at the massive proportions of Clark's buildings, caught the narrow stone lined entrance to the little Hudson Bay canal.

"How," he grunted.

The canoe slid delicately forward till presently it floated in the tiny lock. Naqua said nothing, being seized by an enormous fear that clutched at her stringly throat and held her silent, but Shingwauk felt something stirring in his breast. Here, surrounded by the confused vibrations of the works, he resigned himself to ancient memories. Putting out a brown hand he touched the rough walls, and at the touch the year rolled back. He saw himself a young man, the bow paddle of a great thirty-foot canoe that came down through the broken waters of the big lake to the rapids above, with the Hudson Bay factor enthroned in the middle, surrounded by the precious takings of the winter. He saw Ojibway faces, now long forgotten, and smelt the smoke of vanished camp fires. He saw the thirty-foot canoe lowered delicately into just such a lock as this, and automatically thrust out his own paddle to protect her tender tawny sides from the rough masonry. The hewn gates had opened when he floated out, and here were the gates looking non-understandably new, and with the adze marks still on the yellow timber.

Involuntarily he cast about for the blockhouse and found it hard by. He looked at his own hands—they were knotted and wrinkled; he scanned the twelve-foot canoe—it seemed small and hastily built of poor bark; he stared at the back of Naqua and reflected how bent and rounded it was instead of being straight and strong and supple; he glanced up and where once there stretched green bush and small running streams now stood things bigger than he had ever seen; he sniffed at the wind and, without knowing what it was, caught the sharp odor of metal and machinery. Last of all, he lifted his gaze straight into the eyes of a man who stood staring down from the coping of the little lock.

From the blockhouse window Clark had seen him since first the canoe approached the shore. With a curious thrill he had watched the old chief enter the tiny chamber and float motionless—a visitant from the past. So complete was the picture and so almost poignant the pleasure it afforded, that, loath to mar it, he had hesitated to approach. Never had he conceived anything so intimately appropriate as this linking of bygone days with the insistent present.

They stared at each other, Clark's keen features suffused with interest, Shingwauk's black eyes gazing lustrous from a dark bronze face seamed with innumerable wrinkles. His visage was noble with the proud wisdom of the wilderness and the unnamable shadow of traditions that went back through uncounted centuries of forest life. Clark, recognizing it, felt strangely juvenile. Presently Shingwauk, with some subtle intuition of who and what was the man who stood so quietly, waved his hand. The motion took in the works, the blockhouse, the canal, in short the entire setting.

"You?" he asked in deep, hollow tones.

Clark nodded, smiling. "Yes, me."

Shingwauk's eyes rounded a little. "Big magic," he said impressively and relapsed into silence.

"Hungry?" asked Clark presently.

The old chief did not reply, being too moved by strange thoughts and the rush of memory to feel anything else, but Naqua lifted a withered head in the bow.

"Much hungry," she croaked shrilly.

Clark laughed and signaled to the blockhouse, where the Japanese cook waited, peering from a window. Presently the latter came out carrying a tray. His narrow eyes were expressionless as he laid it on the masonry beside the canoe. Shingwauk glanced at him, puzzled over the flat, oriental features for a moment, and looked away. He seemed but a minor spirit in this great mystery. The old woman ate greedily, but her husband had no desire for food. He was experiencing a transition so breathless that it could but mark the day of his own passing. He waited till Naqua finished such a meal as she had never seen before, his face gaunt but his eyes large and profound with the shadow of unspeakable thoughts. Presently he dipped his blade in the untroubled water, and the canoe backed out of the lock.

"Boozhoo!" he said slowly, with one long look at Clark.

"Good-by! Come again."

The penetrating gaze followed the pigmy vessel as it dipped to the larger stretch of the bay, dwindling with the glint of two blades that flashed with clock-like regularity in the afternoon sun. Soon it reduced to a speck and was out of sight. Clark turned to his office, still contemplating the dignity of his visitor, the stark simplicity of this archaean aristocrat. How soon, after all, he pondered, might not he himself and his works look aboriginal beside the achievements which science had yet to unfold to the world? Then, glancing across the river, he stepped down to the dock and struck over in a fast launch.



XV.—CLARK CONVERTS TORONTO

It is probable that Clark's invasion of the State of Michigan made more impression on the people of St. Marys than any other of his activities, even though it came in the midst of great undertakings. Here was the definite impression of a central power that stretched octopus arms from out of their own town. Even Manson, who was recognized as the champion pessimist, seemed impressed. But St. Marys remained for the most part still inactive. The people looked on, admired the works, discussed each new development, read much about their home town in outside papers, and that was in a general way about all. They saw in Clark a constantly more arresting and suggestive figure. They had nodded approvingly when he secured a private car for the use of himself, his directors and shareholders, and considered it a natural thing when it was announced that he was building upon the hill a large and expensive residence. The blockhouse, they pointed out, had long since become too small to accommodate his many and important visitors.

St. Marys had physically changed. Old streets were paved with asphalt and new ones opened. The car line that ran up to the works branched out across the railway into ground that a few years before was solid bush, but was now covered with substantial houses, occupied by a new population. Parts of old St. Marys were left in the lurch because the owners refused to sell, Dibbott amongst them, and Worden, whose broad river-fronting lawn was surrounded by the commercial section of the rejuvenated town. Filmer's store had been enlarged twice, and so complete was the popularity of the mayor that, with his sound business instinct, it still held place as the local emporium.

At the terminus of the car line a new town had sprung up. In Ironville dwelt the brawn and bone of the works. The place was not restful like St. Marys, but a heterogeneous collection of sprawling cabins, corner saloons and grocery stores where the food was piled on sidewalk stands and gathered to itself the smoke and grime of the works when the wind came up from the south. Here were the Poles and Hungarians and Swedes, with large and constantly increasing families, and to them the sun rose and set in pulp mills and machine shops, blast furnaces and the like. They were mostly big men and strong, who sweated all day and came back, grimy, to eat and then spend the long evenings at the corner saloons or fishing in the upper bay, or sometimes taking the car down to St. Marys, and walking about surveying the comfortable old houses and carefully kept lawns. And of Ironville, St. Marys did not think very much, save that it was dirty and unattractive and, unfortunately, quite a necessary evil.

Back in the country new farms were cleared on heavily timbered land and the farmers found instant market for all they could raise. But the bush still stretched unbroken a little further to the north, and while Clark's engineers spent millions to harness the mighty flow of Superior, the beaver were building their dams in a tamarac swamp not five miles from the works.

All this was indissolubly linked with Philadelphia. Parties of shareholders, large and small, came up in special cars to inspect the plant. These visits were well organized. They found everything going at full blast, everything was explained by the magnetic Clark and there followed banquets at the new hotel, when both shareholders and directors spoke and Filmer voiced the sentiments and pride of the town, and the shareholders went away a little staggered by the size and potentiality of their business but determined to back Clark to the limit and carrying away with them ineffaceable impressions of his strong and hypnotic personality. It was, after all, as they said, a one man show.

Interest grew in Philadelphia, and thousands, swayed as though by the compelling voice of the rapids, plunged deeper. The discovery of iron was but one of the inviting incentives which, from time to time, stimulated support. Million after million was subscribed and sent to this man who inspired such abounding faith in himself and his gigantic plans. It may be that in one of those moments of profound insight which Clark periodically experienced, he became finally convinced that life was short and there must be, in his case at any rate, compressed into it the maximum of human effort ere the day ran out. His brain oscillated between the actual work itself and those extraneous affairs which might at some time affect it.

Amongst those to whom his attention turned was Semple, member of the provincial parliament, in whom he recognized the official voice of the district in certain regions of authority. As the works grew in size and their importance increased, Semple found himself more and more the subject of attention. It flattered him, as well it might, for at this time the Consolidated Company was the largest single undertaking in the country. It did Semple good to refer to "my constituency" with the reflection that in the midst of that wilderness was an undertaking whose capital surpassed that of the greatest railway in the Dominion. In the house of parliament he was listened to attentively, and in St. Marys his office took on a new significance. It was on one of his informal visits to the works that Clark expressed pleasure at the way in which the community was represented.

"I'm all right as far as this company is concerned," said Semple, "but you know the Liberal majority in Ontario is mighty slim—and I'm a Liberal. It's here to-day and gone to-morrow."

"Not for you," answered Clark impressively, "and you haven't had much trouble in getting what we wanted."

"No," grinned Semple, "our majority is too small. The Premier couldn't very well refuse. But," he added with a little hesitation, "opinions differ down there."

"About the works?"

Semple nodded. "Yes, and about you—they're not true believers by any means, you must understand."

Clark grunted a little. "What do they say?"

"It's more what they don't say, since they're mostly Scotch. I mean the financial crowd—most of Toronto is like that. The Scotch got their hooks in long ago and it was a good thing for the country. They reckon it should take twenty-five years to build up a concern like this—not five. You're too fast for that lot."

"Ah! Perhaps I'd better go down and see them."

Semple gazed in astonishment, then concluded he had not made the other sufficiently aware of the criticism as to himself and his affairs that was now so widely spread.

"What's the object?" he blurted; "you've got all you want."

Clark shook his head. "You don't understand me—and these people don't understand their own country,—that's all. They don't believe it because they don't know it. They've never tried to know it. To Toronto the district of Algoma is a howling wilderness where there's good fishing and shooting. You may call Canadians pioneers, but some of them are the stickiest lot imaginable. I'm an American, but I have more faith in their country than they have."

"Just what do you propose to do?"

"What would you say was the most influential body of business and financial men?"

"The Toronto Board of Trade—without question; bankers, and, by the way, the president of your bank here is the president of the Board; manufacturers, brokers, commission men,—oh, most every one who is worth anything."

"Then I'd better go and talk to them. There ought to be some Canadian money in this concern and there isn't a cent. The only thing we got in Canada was one hundred and thirty thousand dollars—but that was debt—St. Marys' debt—" laughed Clark. "We'll get some Canadian directors, too; I don't know but that new blood would be good for us."

"Well," hazarded Semple, "I'd like to be there."

"You will. We'll go together as soon as it's arranged. You ought to be there. They'll probably ask you to confirm what I assert." He touched a bell and a moment later said to his secretary, "See Mr. Bowers and ask him to get in touch with our Toronto solicitors at once. I want them to arrange that I address the Toronto Board of Trade as soon as convenient to that body. I'll speak of developments in Northern Ontario. You understand that this will not be a suggestion from me, but will come from them. Get the idea going in the Toronto papers. You might let it be known that a special car will leave for St. Marys the evening of the address—with the Company's guests—that's all."

The door closed and he turned again to Semple. "I'm no prophet, but I don't mind saying that a month from to-day your Conservative opposition won't be so stiff necked. Man alive! it's nothing but ignorance. This district of yours—" he added very slowly, "is a bigger, richer thing than even I imagined."

Semple went away shaking his head doubtfully. He knew better than Clark that chilling regard with which Toronto financiers contemplated an undertaking in which they had little faith. They were a cold-nosed group, immune, he considered, to the dramatic and strangers to any sudden impulse. And Clark, to their minds, was tarred with the same brush as his undertakings. He might be big and imaginative, but he was over impetuous and haphazard.

Clark himself was disturbed by no discomfort, nor did he make any special preparations for that address, and gave it as arranged some two weeks later, and the manner and substance and effect of it will be vividly remembered by every man who was a member of that Board of Trade some twenty-five years ago. There were the bankers and the rest of them, just as Semple had said, and Clark, surveying them from the platform with steady gray eyes, knew what make of men they were and knew also that they had come there not so much with a thirst for knowledge about their own country as that they might coldly analyze him and that vast undertaking of which they had, as yet, but a fantastic and fragmentary knowledge.

It is without question that the speaker had to an infinitely greater extent than any of the men who stared at him through a blue haze of cigar smoke, a fluid mind and the capacity for instantly seizing upon a situation and determining how to meet it. He possessed as well a voice unrivaled in magnetic power and above all an unshakable faith in the potentiality of the district in which he labored, so that, estimating the mental and professional characteristics of those he faced, Clark began to talk in the coolest and most level way possible without any trace of flamboyant enthusiasm. Touching first of all on the development of the far West, a subject with which, since much Toronto money was involved, they were directly familiar, he diverted to St. Marys, describing Arcadia as he found it, the apparently unpromising nature of the surrounding territory and his own conclusion as to its possible future. Then the rapids became woven into his speech, the nucleus of power which made so many things possible. From this he moved into the wilderness and before his listeners there began to unroll the north country in its primeval silence, broken only by the occasional tap of a prospector's pick or the heavy crash of a moose through a cluster of saplings. And with the story of the wilderness came that of pulp wood and great areas now tributary to St. Marys. And after the pulp mills came the discovery of iron.

At this a stir went through the audience. In another part of the north country was Cobalt, that prodigious reservoir of silver, and it was realized that while Cobalt lay almost next door to Toronto, the Canadian investor had for the most part looked on incredulously, till, too late, he realized that the American had seized and acted with characteristic energy. And now the thing had happened again.

"The iron was there," went on Clark's voice with a subtle and impelling note, "and it only took a year or so to find it. The country was unexplored, that is, in a scientific manner, and no geological maps worth anything were in existence. We have proved by now not less than fifteen million tons of excellent ore. The formation near St. Marys carries an abundance of limestone and the rapids furnish ample power. I think you will admit, gentlemen, that this is non-speculative."

Then one by one he spoke of various phases of the works. In every case the product was there—the merchantable produce—to prove the point; and the evident fact that Clark was actually selling goods over his gigantic counter, coupled with the cool confidence of the man, was all that was needed to convert an audience of critics into one of friendly believers.

He saw the change as it took place. His voice lifted a little and became that of one crying in the wilderness.

"What I have been able to do any man can do. If you don't believe in it, other people do; if you don't develop it, other people will. From Canada we have moved across to Michigan and are developing power on the south side of the river. You Canadians could have done all this. In a few months Canadian railways will be buying steel rails made of Ontario ore, but the rails will be made and sold by Americans in Ontario. Gentlemen, all I ask is that you have faith in your own country, as much faith as has been shown by your neighbors across the line. Your Dominion is now what the United States was fifty years ago and we did not waver. The capital of our allied companies is twenty-seven million dollars. It comes, every cent of it, from Philadelphia. We do not need your money, but will welcome any who wish to join us. Once again, gentlemen, and last of all, have faith in your own country!" Then, with a graceful acknowledgment of the assistance of Semple and the Ontario Government, he sat down.

For a moment there was silence, till came applause, moderate at first, as befitted the meeting, but swelling presently into great volume. Louder and deeper it grew while Clark sat still with the least flush on his usually colorless cheek and a keen light in his gray eyes. He had touched them to the quick, touched them not only by his own evident faith and courage, but also by his superlative energy and the inexorable comparison he had made. It was true! Cobalt was nearly lost to them, and now the iron of Algoma had passed into other hands. Old bankers and financiers cast their minds back and were surprised at the number of similar instances they recalled. And here was Clark, the protagonist, Clark the speculator, Clark the wild man from Philadelphia, demonstrating in the cold language to which they were accustomed and which they perfectly understood, that he had done the same thing over again and on a more imposing scale than ever before.

The denouement was what he had anticipated and what invariably takes place when men with calculating and professionally critical brains are for the first time profoundly stirred by a supremely magnetic spirit that appeals not to their emotions but to those instincts in which the memory of lost opportunities is effaced by confidence in future success. There was, too, a general feeling that Clark in the past was misunderstood. They had been hard on him. It was strange for men who were daily besought to invest in this or that to be told that their money was not asked for; that, as Clark had put in—the job was nearly done, capital expenditure nearly over and steady returns about to begin. And these returns, they reflected, would go straight out of the country to Philadelphia. All this and much more was moving through their minds when the president moved a vote of thanks which was tumultuously carried, whereupon Clark announced that the private car would leave that night for St. Marys, and that he and Mr. Semple would accompany such visitors as cared to spend a day or two at the works.

That afternoon he sent a short letter to his mother. "I have been giving a talk on Toronto—it went quite well," he wrote in closing. "Canadians do not attract, but certainly interest me. There's much underneath that needs work to discover, and I have so little time for work of that kind."

He glanced at the last sentence and nodded approvingly. Perhaps Canadians were too Scotch to be spontaneous. They were worthy, he admitted, but the word implied to him certain attributes that made life a little difficult, and, he silently concluded, a little cold. He would have desired them to be a trifle less deliberate and a shade more responsive. He felt that, however, he might persuade they would never fundamentally understand him, and perceived in this the cause of that condescension he had observed in so many Canadians toward the American. It did not worry him in the slightest as an American. He put it down to that self-satisfaction which is not infrequently acquired by self-made men in the process of their own manufacture, and to remnants of that cumulative British arrogance of forebears who had for centuries led the world.

Early next morning the private car swung through the mining district of Sudbury. Clark's Toronto visitors were still asleep, but he was up and dressed and on the rear platform. The district, covered once by a green blanket of trees, now seemed blasted and dead. Close by were great piles of nickel ore, from which low clouds of acrid vapor rose into the bright air. Clark knew that the ore was being laboriously roasted in order to dissipate the sulphur it contained, prior to further treatment.