The scene, naked and forbidding, struck him forcibly, and the great mining buildings towering in the midst of the desolation they had created looked like ugly castles of destruction. He had noted the place often before, but this morning, refreshed by the incidents of the previous day, his mind was working with unexampled ease and insight. Here, he reflected, two things of value—sulphur and vegetation—were being arduously obliterated. It suddenly appeared fundamentally against nature, and whatever violated nature was, he held, fundamentally wrong.

The train stopped for a few moments and, jumping from the platform, he ran across to the nearest pile. Here he picked up several pieces of ore fresh from the mine, inhaling as he stood the sharp and killing fumes. At St. Marys he made but one kind of pulp—mechanical pulp—in which the soft wood was disintegrated by revolving stones against which it was thrust under great pressure. But he had always desired to make another kind of pulp, so now he thrust the ore samples in his pocket and climbed back into the private car.

Two days later the chief chemist of the works stood beside the general manager's desk looking from the nickel samples into Clark's animated face.

"These are from Sudbury," the latter was saying, "where they waste thousands of tons of sulphur a year, and it costs them a lot to waste it. I want the sulphur to make sulphite pulp."

"Yes?" The reply was a little uncertain.

"To buy what we want is out of the question at the present price. In Alabama and Sicily they are spending a lot of money to get sulphur; in Sudbury they're spending a lot of money to get rid of it. The thing is all wrong."

"Have we any nickel mine, sir?"

"No, but that's the small end of it. I want you to analyze this ore and see if you can devise a commercial process for the separation of nickel from sulphur and save both. If you can, I'll buy a mine. Incidentally we'll produce some pretty cheap nickel. Get busy!"

The chemist nodded and went out, and Clark, glancing after him, fell into profound contemplation. He himself was neither engineer, chemist nor scientist, but had a natural instinct for the suitable uses of physical things. Thus, though without any advanced technical training, his brain was relieved from any consciousness of difficulties which might be encountered in the working out of the problems he set for others with such remarkable facility. He was, in truth, a practical idealist, who, ungrafted to any particular branch of effort, embarked on them all, radiating that magnetic confidence which is the chief incentive toward accomplishment.

The visit of the Toronto financiers had been a success. Clark went round with them, unfolding the history of the works. Nor was this by any means the first tour he had made with similar intent. It was now an old story with him to watch the faces of men reflect their gradual surrender to the spell of his mesmeric brain. What the Torontonians saw was physical and concrete, and, as their host talked, they perceived the promise of that still greater future which he had put before them. Here, they decided, was not a speculation, but an investment of growing proportions. Then from the works to the backwoods by the new railway, where was iron by millions of tons and pulp by millions of cords, the foundations on which were built the gigantic structures at St. Marys. So they had gone back in the glow of that sudden conversion which in its nature is more emotional than the slow march of a purely intellectual process, Clark smiled a little at the thought. He had seen it all so often before.

A little later a knock sounded at his door and Fisette entered, stepping up to the desk, one brown hand in his pocket. Clark glanced at him.

"Well, mon vieux?"

The half-breed laid on the desk half a dozen pieces of bluish gray rock. They were sharp, angular and freshly broken. Through them ran yellow threads, and floating in their semi-translucent depths were fine yellow flakes.

"Gold," said Fisette quietly.



XVI.—GOLD, ALSO CONCERNING A GIRL

Clark stared at the fragment of rock with a sudden and divine thrill. Gold! the ultima thule of the explorer. He had erected vast works to gain gold, not for himself for he desired no wealth, but for others, and here the precious thing lay in his hand. His heart leaped and the blood rushed to his temples while his eyes wandered to the impassive face of Fisette. Who and what was the breed that he could be so calm?

Out of a riot of sensations he gradually reestablished his customary clearness of vision. Here was additional evidence of the inherent wealth of the country. It was that for which men dared death and peril and hardship, and it struck him that it would be a dramatic thing to ship steel rails and pulp and gold bullion on the same day.

But for all of this he was not carried away. However great the thrill, his mind could not be diverted by the discovery of a quartz vein. He knew, too, that mining of this character was a tricky thing and that nature, as often as not, left the shelves of her storehouses empty when by all the rules of geology they ought to be laden. He would explore and develop the find, but its chief value, he ultimately decided, was psychological, and would be seen in the continued support of his followers. Presently he looked up and caught the disappointed eyes of Fisette.

"It's all right, mon vieux," he said with an encouraging smile, "and it's very good. How far from the railway?"

"About six mile." Fisette's voice was unusually dull.

"And you have it all staked and marked and dated?"

"Yes, I'm not one damn fool."

Clark laughed outright. "Of course not—but listen—you remember when you found the iron last year what I told you?"

"You told me to keep my mouth shut. I keep it."

"That's right. And now I want you to keep your mouth open."

Fisette gasped. "What you mean?"

"I mean this. You told nobody about the iron, now you go and tell everybody about the gold. Shout about it. The more you tell the better. The whole town can prospect on our concession if they want to. I hope every one of them will find gold. I'll come out myself next week and see what you've turned up, and of course you get for it what I gave you for the iron last year. Au revoir, mon vieux, and when you go to town, talk—talk—talk! But just wait a minute in the outside office."

Fisette backed silently out, his dark brow pinched into puzzled wrinkles. He had expected his patron to take the samples and stare at them and then at him with that wonderful look he remembered so well and could never forget; a look that had made the breed feel strangely proud and happy. He had often seen it since when, quite alone in the woods, he peered through the gray smoke of his camp fire and imagined his patron sitting just on the other side. And now he was to go into St. Marys and do nothing but talk! He shook his head doubtfully.

No sooner had the door closed than Clark summoned the superintendent of his railway department.

"Fisette has found gold out near the line. There's going to be a rush, and you'd better get ready for it. Also you'd better run up some kind of an hotel at Mile 61,—it's the jumping off place. That's all—please send Pender here."

A moment later he turned to his secretary.

"Fisette is waiting outside. Talk to him, he's found gold. Get the story and give it to the local paper. Say that I've no objection to prospectors working on our concession, and that I'll guarantee title to anything they find. Get in touch with the Toronto papers and let them have it too. That's all."

The door closed again and, with a strange feeling of restlessness, he walked over to the rapids, seating himself close to their thundering tumult. What message had the rapids for him now? And just as the voice of irresistible power began to bore into his brain he noticed a girl perched on a rock close by. Simultaneously she turned. It was Elsie Worden.

She waved a hand, and he moved carefully up stream over the slippery boulders. She looked at him with startled pleasure. It was unlike Clark to move near to any one.

"I hope I'm not trespassing."

"No," his voice came clearly through the roar of many waters; "do you often come here?"

She smiled. "It's the most conversational place I know."

The gray eyes narrowed a little. "You have discovered that the rapids talk back?"

"They have told me all kinds of things ever since I was a child. When did you find it out?" Elsie's voice lifted a little.

"The very first day I reached St. Marys, almost the first hour." He was wondering inwardly why he should talk thus to any one.

"I'm so glad," she answered contentedly, "because they must have told you to do many things, and you've done them. But I can't half answer what they say to me."

Clark studied her silently. Her face was not only beautiful but supremely intelligent, and had, moreover, the signet of imagination. She was, he concluded, utterly truthful and courageous.

"I wonder you get time to come here at all," she hazarded after a thoughtful pause.

"It is time well spent." He pointed to the heaped crests in midstream. "The solution of many a problem lies out there; I've got one to think of now."

Had Elsie been an ordinary girl she would have disappeared forthwith, but between them sped something that convinced her that he wanted her to stay.

"Am I allowed to know what it is?"

"It's this." Clark took a fragment of rock from his pocket and laid it in her palm.

"What is it?" she said curiously.

"Gold!"

"Oh!" The color flew to her cheeks and her eyes became very bright. "Where did it come from and who found it?"

"About sixty miles from here, and Fisette found it—he's one of my prospectors."

"He's the man who discovered iron for you?"

"Yes."

"How very extraordinary," she said under her breath.

"Why should it be?"

"The last time we talked you had just found iron, and now it's gold. This is even more wonderful, isn't it?"

He shook his head. "It's pretty—but not nearly so important." Something in the girl's manner attracted him strangely and he went on talking as he seldom talked. Her eyes never left his face.

"Yes," she said presently, "I'm glad to understand. But the strange thing to me is that all these people," here she pointed towards the works, "are doing things they would not have done if you hadn't come. Why is that?"

"Some people think that the most successful man is the one who gets others to work the hardest for him," said Clark, smiling.

She shook her head. "That doesn't suit. I know what it is."

"Do you?"

"It's vision." There was a thrill in her low voice. Then she added, very swiftly, "You haven't many friends, have you, Mr. Clark?"

He stared at her in surprise, and in the next instant decided that she was right. "Why do you ask that?"

"Because you must see past most people, don't you, to what is ahead? It is hard to put just what I mean into words."

He nodded gravely. "It is quite true that I haven't any very close personal friends, I've moved about too quickly to make them. As for my employees, I see them chiefly through their work."

"Then you don't really know them," she announced.

"Possibly,—but I know their results. It sounds a little inhuman, doesn't it?"

"I think I understand." Elsie was tempted to probe this gray-eyed man about Belding, but presently gave it up. She was conscious that while she was talking to Clark the figure of the engineer faded into the background.

"So there's really no one?" she went on reflectively.

"Only my mother," he said gravely, "that is, so far."

At that her heart experienced a new throb. He was infinitely removed from any man she had ever dreamed of.

"Are you never lonely?"

"Perhaps I am," he replied with utter candor, "but I fill my life with things which to most people are inanimate, though to me they are very much alive. And what about yourself?"

"I don't know." Her voice was a little unsteady. She had a swift conviction that Clark was essentially kind, as well as a great creator. "You want this, don't you?" She held out the piece of ore while the flakes of gold shone dully in the sun.

"Please keep it, the first bit out of what I hope will make a mine. And I hope you will have iron as well as gold in your life."

She glanced at him genuinely touched. "Can it really matter to you?"

"Why shouldn't it?"

"The first time I met you I was a little afraid of you."

Clark chuckled. "Am I so formidable?"

"Not to me any more. Perhaps it is because we understand the same things." She pointed to the rapids. "This, for instance."

"Would you tell me just what you hear out there."

She shook her head doubtfully. "There are no words for most of it, but I seem to catch the voices of things that want to be expressed somehow." Then, with sudden breathlessness, "It's a universal language—like music."

"That's it," he said soberly, "it has all the majors and minors." He regarded the girl with quickening interest. What was the elemental note in her that responded to this thundering diapason?

"It's a voice crying in the wilderness," she continued in the same low tone, then, with a smile, "at least it was a wilderness before you came. I wonder if you would do—" she broke off suddenly, her eyes brilliant.

"Tell me, and I'll do it."

She clapped her hands. "I wish you would visit us all when we go camping next month; you'd like it."

"I'm sure I would, but—"

"But what? I knew there'd be something."

"I'd have to take the works with me."

"But you said you'd do it." She glanced at him as though confidence were shattered.

"Then I will, if it's humanly possible."

"It will be about a hundred miles down the lake, near Manitoulin Island. Father knows."

"I'm glad father knows," he smiled.

The girl walked slowly back with the feeling that she had seen further into the heart of this remarkable man than ever before. Opposite the blockhouse, at which she looked with a strange sensation, she met Belding, swinging in from the far corner of the works with a transit over his shoulder. She seemed thoughtful and distrait, and he glanced at her puzzled.

"Been exploring? I didn't know you were coming up."

"I didn't know either," she said a little nervously. "Will you come back to lunch?"

"Sorry, I'm too busy. Where have you been?"

"Over at the rapids. And, Jim, see what Mr. Clark gave me."

"Gold?" he said sharply.

"Yes, isn't it wonderful?"

"Who found it?"

"One of Mr. Clark's prospectors, Fisette."

"And who told you?"

"Mr. Clark himself." The girl had a sudden sense of discomfort. Why was Belding so inquisitive?

"I haven't heard anything about it," he said shortly.

"No one has outside of the office, except myself."

"But why should Clark tell you?"

"I don't know. Why shouldn't he?"

Belding thrust the legs of his instrument into the ground. "I have an idea that he's telling you too much." The young man's eyes were hot with resentment.

"Jim, how dare you!"

"Well, where do I come in? You haven't been much interested in me the last year or so."

She flushed. "That's not fair. You know how fond I am of you."

"But Clark doesn't need you—and I do."

"Do you object to my having friends?" she said tremulously.

"Elsie, will you marry me to-morrow?" Belding's voice was shaky but in deadly earnest.

"What nonsense."

He shook his head. "It isn't to me,—I mean it. There is no one else. There never will be. Can't you realize that?"

"I don't want to be married—now—" she said slowly.

He snatched up his transit. "Thanks, I thought it would come to that." He took off his hat very formally and strode on. In his angry brain burned the thought that the sooner Clark came to grief, the sooner Elsie would get rid of this illusion. And then, as always, the brave and loyal soul of him sent out a silent protest.

By now the wires were humming, and through St. Marys the news ran like quicksilver. In years past there had been individual discoveries by wandering bushmen, but none of them of value. Tales were afloat that old Shingwauk down at the settlement knew of a gold bearing vein, and that the knowledge would die with him. But at the formal announcement that the Consolidated had found gold, it was universally believed that it was of a necessity a bigger and better thing than ever before, and carried with it all the reputation of Clark's immense undertaking.

So began the rush to the woods. It was not one in which tenderfeet deserted their jobs and took to the hills, but a stirring amongst the stiff bones of old prospectors who had given up the fight but were now infused with new courage. In Fisette they saw the man who had won out for the second time while they sat and smoked. There was a seeking out and sharpening of picks blunted by inumerable taps on forgotten ridges, and a stuffing of dunnage bags, and a sortie to Filmer's store for flour and bacon and a few sticks of forty per cent. dynamite, and patching of leaky shoe packs. Twenty-four hours later the little station up at the works was crammed with men whose leathern faces were alight with an old time joy, and whose eyes sparkled with the flame of a nearly extinguished fire. After them came others from greater distance, then peddlers and engineers representing mining firms in search of properties, and keepers of road houses where the lamps burned all night, and there were women and songs and whiskey that flouted the peace of the forest. And with all this the traffic returns of the Consolidated Company's railway leaped up, and Fisette, who was in charge of a dozen men stripping his find of roots and earth and moss, began to hear all round him, both near and far, the dull thud of blasting and the faint clink of hammer on steel.

But it was a month before the general manager's private car slid into the siding at Mile 61, where Clark, descending, found Fisette waiting for him, and together they stepped out for the discovery. Here and there along the trail other prospectors fell in silently behind. They wanted to see Clark when he got the first glimpse of the vein. Arriving a little breathless, he looked down at the bluish, white streak that nakedly crossed a little ridge, clipped to a ravine on either side, and reappeared boldly further on. Fisette picked up samples from time to time, at which his patron glanced, and finally, taking mortar and pan, crushed a fist full of ore and washed it delicately, till a long tapering tail of yellow metal clung to the rounded angle of the pan. And at that Clark asked a few questions of the mining engineer who had come with him, nodded contentedly and started back, leaving Fisette with the pan still in his muscular hands.

That night the breed squatted by his camp fire, too offended to smoke and wondering dumbly why his patron had left so soon and said so little, for this was a day to which he had looked forward for weeks. He did not dream that Clark was even that moment thinking of him as the private car clicked evenly over the rail joints on the way to the iron mines. And this indeed was the case, for in the first tide of the rush of gold seekers Clark had discerned the workings of an ancient rule. Always it had been gold which inflamed the human mind to endure to the uttermost. His imagination went back, and he saw the desperate influx heading for California, for Australia, for South Africa, that mob of adventurous spirits for whom there burned nightly over the hills the lambent promise of the morrow, strengthening and invigorating to further effort. He saw this mob lose itself in forest, mountain, plain and canyon, a wild-eyed herald of civilization. He saw roads and bridges, farms and villages take form along the trail it traversed, till, slowly but inexorably, the wilderness was conquered, and the sons of the pioneers sat in contentment under their own roof-tree in full possession of a wealth greater by far than that their ancestors had come to seek. But it was gold with its yellow finger that first beckoned the way.

Next day, at the iron mine, he stood listening to the deep cough of the big crusher and the loose rattle of machine drills. A little on one side, and as yet unshaken by dynamite, was the knoll on which Wimperley and the rest had been told what they were sitting on, and he smiled at the recollection. Surveying the widening excavation, he reflected that here, after all, was the heart of the entire enterprise. In fifty—in a hundred years—the mine would still be unexhausted. It did not seem romantic like Fisette's vein of gold ore, this barren-looking upheaval, but to him the romance of a thing was in its potentiality and not its appearance, and it moved in his mind now that there was every reason for haste. Philadelphia was beginning to weary of capital expenditure, and demanded an output of steel rails at the earliest possible moment.

Completing his round with a visit to Baudette's headquarter camp, he inspected train loads of pulp wood ready for the mills. The areas originally secured were nearly denuded and Baudette was forced further afield. The mills were doing and had always done well, but their profits were so instantly absorbed by allied and interlinked undertakings that Clark at times wondered whether he was asking one dollar to do too much. He reflected with a touch of surprise that the small company formed to supply St. Marys with water and light was, after all, the only one which from the first had actually disbursed dividends. But the rail mill would settle all that. Returning to the works he found a note on his desk that Townley, the chemist, would like audience. He sent for him.

"Well?" he demanded impatiently; "what about that sulphur?"

Townley submitted a condensed report. "We can get it out at a cost of about half the market price." He spoke with a note of triumph. He had been slaving over the problem with the sacrificial zeal that characterizes all keen chemists. But Townley did not know, and it was impossible for him to know, that many things are feasible in a laboratory which are irreducible to commercial terms.

Clark nodded as though he expected this. "Bring Belding in here."

When the engineer appeared, he went on, "We're going to do something new. Townley will give you his end of it, and you work out the rest. It's chemical engineering, so get any assistance you need. Give me estimates of costs and say how soon the plant can be put up. Figure on a hundred tons of sulphite pulp per day—dry weight. That's all."

The two went out, and he leaned back, pressing his finger tips hard on his lids, and finding in the red blur that followed something that soothed and rested his eyes. He was not one who sought out problems and chased them to their solution, but rather one who perceived the problem and, by singularly acute vision, perceived also the solution just behind it. There were so many things that were overlooked by others but presented themselves to him for attention, that he had long since ceased to wonder why the world was full of men he considered ineffectual. Now he ran rapidly over the existing situation, marshaling his various undertakings in due order, when there sounded in his head something that seemed like the tearing of a piece of cloth. He drew a long breath, experiencing for the first time in his life a sense of intolerable weariness. And then, suddenly he thought of Elsie.

It was strange that he should think of her now—there were so many other and insistent things. Wimperley and the rest had come up to congratulate him and gone away elated but at the same time puzzled that he should regard the discovery with such apparent indifference. It was true that creditors were becoming pressing, but the rail mill, it was universally admitted, would pull the thing through. Now a reaction set in and he longed for a little solitude. It lay in his mind that just over the horizon was something more inviting than all that had taken place.

An hour later he was in the bow of a big tug, heading down stream, having left orders that he must not be disturbed. As the green landscape slid by he gave himself over to retrospection, and his mind wandered comfortably back through all the stages of the past years. Surveying the folk of St. Marys, he concluded that only Filmer and Bowers had been active supporters from the start. He would remember that. Came a voice at his elbow. It was the master of the tug.

"Where to, sir?"

"A hundred miles from here there's a camping party. Find them."

They anchored that night in a long and narrow inlet where the trembling reflection of the tug's funnel lay beside the mirrored tops of pine trees that clung to the rocky shore. Ahead and behind was the open lake. There was no sound but the twitter of sleepy birds and the honk of a startled heron that winged its flight to solitudes still more remote. Then Clark began to fish, and, just as he landed a five pound bass, a girl's voice sounded clearly while a canoe floated round a nearby point. Elsie was in it and alone.



XVII.—THE GIRL IN THE CANOE

She stared at him with undisguised astonishment. "Good evening," he laughed. "Here I am!"

The girl grew rather pink. "Isn't it wonderful that you really found us?"

"I didn't, the captain found you."

"It's hard to think of you as—well—just here."

"I came down for a day or two off. For the first time in years, I've forgotten all about the works."

"I'm glad, and do you—"

At that instant there came from between Clark's feet a mighty thump, and the big bass, curving its spiney back, leaped clear of the boat and landed in the brown water with a splash. A flip of the broad tail and it vanished.

"You've lost your fish!" exclaimed Elsie, aghast.

"Perhaps you lost it, but it doesn't matter."

"Is that the way you feel, just slack and careless?"

"Just like that."

"I knew you had a mind above fish," she laughed.

"That's a distinction, because few fishermen have. Now I'd like to thank you again for your note of a few weeks ago."

"Do you really remember that?" she said earnestly.

He nodded, and over him came a slow conviction that there was an avenue of life he had never traversed and which seemed to be, after all, more inviting than he had allowed himself to believe. Elsie was years younger than Clark, but just now the latter felt strangely young.

"Do you recollect finding out that I had but a few personal friends?"

"Yes, of course."

"Well," he said thoughtfully, "I would like another."

"Oh!" She stared at him, her startled eyes full of light.

"You don't mind, I hope?"

The canoe drifted like a leaf towards his heavy boat, but Elsie's paddle was motionless.

"It would make me very happy. But could I really do anything for you? It has always seemed that," she hesitated and her lips became tremulous, "that you didn't need any one." Then she added under her breath, "like me."

Clark's face was grave. "And if I did?"

She looked at him with growing fascination. Surrounded by the gigantic things of his own creation he was impressive, but here in the solitudes he took on even more suggestive characteristics. She stretched out a slim brown hand.

"You will find me very difficult sometimes, I warn you now."

"I like difficult things, they seem to come my way."

The languid hours sped by. Clark swam, fished, paddled with the girl, entertained her party in the tug's white painted saloon, and chatted with Mrs. Dibbott, the chaperon, about St. Marys. But most of all he explored the mind of Elsie Worden. It was like opening successive doors to his own intelligence. She startled him with her intuition, delighted him with her keen sense of humor, and seemed to grasp the man's complex nature with superlative ease. And, yielding to her charms, Clark, for the first time in his life, felt that he must go slow. It was a new country to him. Previous experience had left no landmarks here.

They were drifting lazily along the shore, miles from the others, when Elsie, after a long pause, glanced at him curiously.

"Will you tell me just what you find in music?"

"But I don't know anything about it."

"Perhaps not, but you feel it, and that's what counts. I've only heard you play twice."

"Once," he corrected.

"No, I was out on the bay one night, below the blockhouse, when you were playing." Belding's name was on the girl's lips but at the moment Belding did not fit and she went on evenly, "It is something like the rapids."

"I'm glad you think that. It's the response that one gets."

"That's what I feel. You're an American, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"I thought so. You see your people are more responsive than we are, and you don't seem so ashamed of enthusiasm."

"We can't help it, but it's a little awkward sometimes," his eyes twinkled, "that is in Canada. Now talk about yourself."

"There's so little to say. I was asleep for years like every one else in St. Marys, till you came and woke us all up.

"And then?"

"I realized that life was rather thin and that I wanted a lot of things I'll never get."

"Why never,—and what do you want?"

"To be part of something bigger than myself," said the girl very slowly.

Clark felt an answering throb. That was what he had felt and wanted and achieved.

"To feel what the world feels and know something of what the world knows," she added intensely. "I want to work."

"That sounds strenuous."

She flushed a little. "Won't you take me seriously?"

"I beg your pardon. As a matter of fact I've always taken you seriously."

"Have you, why?"

"Perhaps because I don't know anything about your sex," he answered teasingly. "I never had time,—they're sealed books to me."

"So this is your first exploring trip?"

"The very first,—and it's not at all what I expected."

A question moved in Elsie's eyes but she did not speak. Clark, taking in the supple grace of her figure and expanding to the candor of her spirit, wondered if now, at the apex of his labors, the color of his future life was being evolved by this girl who was as free and untainted as the winds of Superior. He had at times attempted friendships of another kind and found them unsatisfying and pondered whether this might not be the human solution of that loneliness which he had admitted to her, months before, was only so far assuaged by driving himself to the uttermost. Then her voice came in again.

"It was so queer meeting you here, just as if the voice of the rapids had carried a hundred miles. I always associate you with the rapids."

"But they'll go on forever, and I won't."

"You're doing something better than that," she said swiftly.

He laid down his paddle. "I'd like very much to know just what my new friend means."

"You're touching the hidden springs of things that will go on forever." Elsie's voice was vibrant with feeling. "That's the difference between you and other men I know. You're in the secret."

Clark drew a long breath. "When did you decide that, and why?"

"When I heard about your speech that first night. I was only seventeen then but I felt almost as if you'd told me the secret. So I've followed all you've accomplished since, and I would give anything to have done just the littlest part of it."

"So it's just a matter of recognizing one's destiny and following it?" he said curiously.

"Just that." Complete conviction was in her tones.

"Then, for the first time in my life, I'm wondering what destiny has in store for the immediate future," he said with a long stare of his gray eyes, and in them was that which set her heart throbbing.

"You must go to-morrow?" she ventured. Could such wonderful moments ever be repeated?

"Yes, at sunrise, and I'll be at the works at noon. Do you know that you've done a lot for me? It's a selfish remark, but it's true, and may we have another talk when you get back?"

Her lips trembled, and Clark, gazing at her, felt an intense yearning. She was very beautiful and very understanding. Then again he hesitated. There were things, many things, he had in mind to arrange before he spoke. A few weeks would make no difference, but only prolong those delightful and undecipherable sensations to which he now yielded luxuriously. If this was love, he had never known love before.

The sun's red orb was thrusting up over the glassy lake when, next morning, the big tug with a slow thudding of her propeller, moved from her anchorage. At Clark's orders they passed on down the channel, and just where the lake began to broaden was a cluster of white tents. Two Indians were warming their fingers at a rekindled fire. Clark stared hard, and lifted his hat.

One of the tent flaps had been opened, and a girl stood against a snowy background, her hair hanging loose. As the tug drew abreast she waved good-by, and, for another mile, till he swung round the next point, he could see the slim figure and its farewell salutation. There was something mystical about it all. The girl vanished abruptly behind a screen of trees, the propeller revolved more rapidly, and the sharp swish of cleft water deepened at the high, straight bow.

He stood for a long time immersed in profound thought, and oblivious of the keen air of early morning. Never before had he found it hard to go back to duty.

Six hours later the tug swept into the St. Marys River, and three miles ahead lay the works, the vast square-topped buildings rising, it seemed, out of the placid waters of the bay. He drew a long breath and emerged from fairyland. Had he created all this? Yet it was not more real than something he had just left and had also created.



XVIII.—MATTERS FINANCIAL

The young manager of the local bank through which Clark transacted his affairs sat late one night in his office. He had just returned from dinner at the big house, where he left his host in an unusually genial and communicative mood. It seemed that Clark's mind, tightened with the continued strain of years, had wished to slacken itself in an hour or two of utter candor, and Brewster had listened with full consciousness that this was an occasion which might never be repeated. But in his small cubicle, walled in with opaque glass, Clark's magnetic accents appeared to dwindle before the inexorable character of the statement Brewster now scrutinized. It was the detailed and financial history of each successive company, a history in which birth and bones and articulation were clearly set forth, and what struck the young man most forcibly was the extraordinary way in which each was interlinked with the rest. The combined capital of all was, he noted, twenty-seven million dollars, and greater than that yet reached by the Canadian Pacific Railway. Brewster had known it before, but the bald and cumulative figures in front of him made the fact the more momentous.

Probing still deeper, it became apparent that while the pulp mills made steady profits, these were so adjusted as to form but one link in a chain. In all there were some ten companies, each drawing from the others its business and its surplus. Clark had not been far wrong when he reflected that he might be asking one dollar to do too much, and now the sharp brain of the young manager was coming to the same conclusion. Behind his office building passed Clark's steamships, for there was a transportation company, and into the wilderness Clark's trains plunged with unfailing regularity. Up at the works the blast furnaces were vomiting flame and smoke, and the rail mill was nearly completed. Baudette was sending down train loads and rafts of wood, and at the iron mine dynamite was lifting thousands of tons of ore. The entire aggregation of effort and expenditure had been so systematically interwoven that Brewster there and then decided that if one link in the chain should part, the whole fabric of the thing would dissolve. It was true that he made no advances without authority from his headquarters, but he had long been aware that Clark's was the largest commercial account in Canada and, he reflected gravely, it all went through his own office. Two days later he reached Toronto, and asked audience of his general manager.

Now since this record is partly that of the relative standing of different individuals in the development of a little known district, consider Brewster in consultation with Thorpe, the general manager of his great bank. Brewster was young, active, in close touch with Clark and his enterprises, enthusiastic, yet touched with a certain power of quick and ruthless decision. He had been interested and even thrilled by the doings at St. Marys, but he had never yielded himself completely to Clark's mesmeric influence. Thorpe, a much older man and of noted executive ability, was one of those who by that noted address at the Board of Trade had been rooted out of long standing indifference and imbued with surprised confidence, and this translation, so rapid in its movements, still survived. In consequence, he listened to the younger man with a thinly veiled incredulity.

"I can't quite see it," he said thoughtfully, "even from your own account. It's probably the proportions of the thing that makes you anxious."

Brewster shook his head. "No, it isn't that. There's a big power house on the American side and it didn't earn a cent for a year, something wrong with the foundations, though it's all right now. There's the sulphur extraction plant that doesn't extract sulphur, and—"

"What?" interrupted Thorpe. He, like others, had read of the new process with keen interest, and was anxious to learn details.

"It worked in the laboratory but not on a commercial basis. Belding, the chief engineer, is all cut up about it. Consequence is Clark is buying sulphur, and just now pulp prices are so low he's not making anything out of it."

"Have you seen Wimperley lately?"

"He was up with Birch a week or so ago."

"Say anything particular?"

Brewster smiled reflectively. "He didn't seem to want to talk."

"What are the obligations?" asked Thorpe after a little pause.

"Of all companies?"

"Of course."

"About two millions as nearly as I can get at them."

"And to us?"

Brewster handed over a slip of paper. "This is a copy of what I forwarded yesterday."

The older man's brows cleared a little. The combined overdraft was just over a hundred thousand, against which the bank held Philadelphia acceptances which he knew would be met. He glanced over the statement again.

"You've looked after this extremely well. Now what do you want me to do?"

Brewster drew a long breath. "I don't want you to take my word for anything, but come up and see for yourself. Go into the woods and up to the mines and through the entire works—then come to your own conclusions. It may be I'm too near the thing to get the right perspective, but I give it to you as I see it."

Thorpe nodded. "I know you have and your branch has done extremely well."

"Thanks." Brewster laughed. "That's due to the man we're talking about."

"And supposing," put in Thorpe thoughtfully, "supposing the whole thing were to go smash! What would you say?"

The other man's eyes rounded a little. "I'd say," he answered slowly, "that even in that case the entire district would be in Clark's debt."

"Yes?"

"Because they know what's in the country now and how to get it out—and they never knew that before."

"And the immediate future—what do you see that depends on?"

"Steel rails," said Brewster with conviction. "Will you come up?"

Thorpe did go up, and Clark, who knew that Brewster had been in Toronto and conceived why, met them both at the works with a genuine welcome. He felt, nevertheless, that his undertakings were to be analyzed with cold deliberation.

At the end of two days Thorpe had seen them all—had peered into the gray black bowels of the iron mine, watched Baudette denuding the slopes of a multitude of hills—seen the stamps in the gold mill hammering out the precious particles that were caught by great quicksilver plates,—seen booms and train loads of pulp on their way to St. Marys—seen the white spruce shaven of its brown bark and ground and sheeted and loaded into the gaping holds of Clark's steamships—seen the blast furnaces vomit their molten metal—seen the rhythmic pumps and dynamos send water and light through every artery of the young city—seen the veneer mills ripping out flexible miles of their satiny wood—seen the power house on the American side making carbide to the low rumble of thousands of horsepower, and seen the electric railway that linked Ironville with St. Marys. And all the time Clark had put forward neither arguments in his own favor nor any request for credit, but only allowed these things to speak for themselves, till, as the aggregate became more and more rounded and the picture more complete, Thorpe perceived that here was something which initiated by an extraordinary brain had now grown to such vast proportions that it supplied its own momentum, and must of necessity move on to its appointed and final result.

But Clark did not distinguish in either Thorpe or Brewster any determining factor of his future. They would do what they were meant to do, and play the game as the master of the game decided. They might modify, but they would never create. His mind was pitched so far ahead that it was beside the mark to attempt to influence men who, he conceived, were not themselves endowed with any prophetic vision. He had to deal with them and he dealt with them, and though he wondered mutely at their abiding sense of the present and their apparent lack of faith in the inevitable future, he descended from the heights of his own imagination and parleyed in the bald and merciless language of strictly commercial affairs.

It was at the end of his visit that Thorpe asked about the sulphur plant.

Clark glanced at him curiously. The sulphur plant was so small a fraction of the whole.

"There's a certain step in the process we have not perfected—that's all. You don't believe in economic waste, do you?"

"No, certainly not—if avoidable."

"Well, I'm satisfied that this is avoidable. It is just as much a mistake to allow water to run away when it might be grinding pulp, as it is to drive sulphur into the air instead of catching and selling it. You pollute the air, you kill the trees, you spend a lot of money, and you waste the sulphur. Nature has a lot of processes up her sleeve we've not realized as yet. This is one of them."

"Then this plant is a mistake?" Thorpe got it out with some hesitation.

Clark laughed. "Some of it—so far. I make plenty of mistakes, don't you? It seems to me it's the proportion his mistakes bear to the things that succeed which determines a man's usefulness. I don't believe in the one who doesn't make them."

Thorpe grinned in spite of himself. "Perhaps you're right—but I'll be glad to know as soon as you're rolling rails. When do you expect that?"

"In six months at the latest. I'll send you a section of the first one."

The banker drove toward the station in unaccustomed silence. Presently he turned to Brewster. "You were right and, by George! Clark is right too, but we must not get our mutual rectitude mixed up. He's got to go ahead, come what may, and we've got to help him all we reasonably can, but with us our shareholders come before his. That's the point. He may turn out to be a private liability, but in any case he's a national asset. I want a bit of that first rail. Good-by!"

And Clark, after waving farewell at the big gates of the works, had gone into the rail mill and stood in the shadow in deep contemplation. He glanced at the massive flywheel, the great dominant dynamo and the huge, inflexible rolls. At one end were the heating furnaces, their doors open, and gentle fires glowing softly within to slowly raise the temperature of newly set brick. Around him was the swing of work directed by skilled brains, and machinery moved slowly into its appointed place of service. It was a good mill, he reflected, for a second hand mill. For all of this the place was dead—awaiting the pulse of power and the unremitting supply of incandescent metal. Glancing keenly about, he experienced again that strange sound as though between his temples, and suddenly he felt tired. The thing was good, very good. But he too wanted to see the lambent metal spewed from between the shining rolls.

It was a notable day in St. Marys when the first rail was actually rolled, and symbolical to many people of many different things. Infection spread from the words to the town, till all morning there was a trickling stream of humanity that filed in at the big gates and moved on toward the dull roar of the mill. Even though the mass of folk in St. Marys still failed to grasp the full significance of the event, they saw in it that which put their one time Arcadia beside Pittsburg, and invested their own persons with a new sense of importance.

Clark, watching the fruition of a seven year dream, felt thrilled as never before. Here, in this heat and mechanical tumult, was being forged the last link in the chain into which he had hammered his entire strength and spirit. It was a good thing, he reflected, to make pulp and ship it on his own steamships, but this was the biggest, deepest and most enduring thing of all. Some men at such a moment would have felt humble, but he recognized only the unfolding of an elemental drama in which he played his own particular role. A few weeks later he closed a contract with a great railway company for a million dollars' worth of his new product, which he unhesitatingly guaranteed would live up to the most exacting specifications.

The new plant had settled down to the steady drive of work when the mayor of St. Marys, walking up the street in a mood of peculiar satisfaction, saw just ahead of him the bulky form of the chief constable. He stepped a little faster and laid a detaining hand on the broad shoulder.

"Arrest yourself for a minute," he chuckled. "How's our town pessimist feeling this fine morning?"

Manson glanced sideways. "I suppose you want to rub it in. Well, I don't know that my opinions have changed very much."

"Takes more than a few thousand tons of rails to move you, eh? But isn't Mahomet going to come to the mountain at last?"

Manson shook his head.

"If he doesn't the mountain will come to Mahomet—and crush him," continued Filmer gayly, then, his mood changing, "but honestly, old man, why don't you drop your gloomy views? You've an excellent chance right now, and, besides, they're getting rather amusing."

"I've a right to my own opinions."

"Naturally, we all have, but you don't act up to them—at least you didn't."

Manson glowered at him with quick suspicion. "What's that?"

"Your left hand knows what your right hand doeth—every time,—at least it's so in St. Marys. You're too big to get under a bushel basket. Every one saw that you were dabbling in real estate for years, and made a good clean up, but you seemed so darned ashamed of it that no one cared to discuss it with you. And all the time you were our prize package disbeliever. What's the use? It's your own affair, but why don't you make a lightning change like the man in the circus last week? Your friends would welcome it. You're not the man we used to know."

"If it's my own affair," came back Manson with growing resentment, "why not leave it at that? Did you never make any money out of a thing you didn't believe in?"

"Yes," said Filmer slowly, "I have, but after that I believed in it, and said so. It was only fair to the fellow behind it."

Manson went stolidly back to his square stone office, where he took out his broker's statement for the previous month and stared at it silently. Already he knew the figures by heart. Another two point rise in Consolidated stock and he would realize his net profit of one hundred thousand dollars. He ran over his own scribbled figures on the back of the statement, as he had gone over them many times before. They were quite right. For weeks past his selling order had been in, been acknowledged, and now at any moment the thing might be done. It might even have already been done. The blood rushed to his head at the thought. How many other chief constables, he wondered, had amassed fortunes from behind their forbidding gray stone walls? Then he thought of his wife and children, and his eyes softened, while the broker's statement in his big hand trembled ever so slightly. He smiled at that, and it came to his mind that perhaps statements in other men's hands sometimes trembled at the thought of their wives and children and the fortunes that—and here Manson felt vaguely uncomfortable and, getting up, slowly locked his desk.

Just at that moment, Filmer, who had returned to his office, was sitting staring at a half-section of steel rail that lay in his hand. It was smooth and highly polished, a thin slice of the very first product of Clark's last and greatest undertaking. He experienced a quite extraordinary sensation at feeling the thing, and it snatched his mind back seven years till again in the Town Hall he heard a magnetic voice assuring the citizens that the town lacked just three essentials—experience, money and imagination, and that the speaker would supply them all. It was a far cry from that evening to the deep drone of the rail mill, and Filmer, detaching himself from the picture in which he formed a part, began now to perceive its dramatic vitality. Were Clark taken out the whole thing seemed to fall to pieces.

And up at the See House, the bishop was examining just such another section of rail, while the gold of his episcopal ring shone beside the gray of steel. To him it meant many things, but chiefly it was prophetic of that which would soon put an end to the detachment and loneliness of the scattered communities to which he ministered. Holding the thing thus, his heart went out to Clark, and he yearned with a great longing over the spirit of this man who so reveled in the joy of creation. His eyes wandered to the Evangeline. She lay at anchor just off shore. A thin film of smoke slid from her funnel, and he could see the Indian pilot swabbing down her smooth teak decks. Then, in sudden impulse, he smiled and, laying the rail section on top of a half finished sermon, wrote a short note, and, calling his man servant, instructed him to wait for an answer.

A little later the note reached Clark in his office, where he sat motionless under the sway of a slight reaction. At the moment he did not want to work. He was continuously conscious of ribbons of red hot rails that streamed like fluted snakes from under the gigantic rolls, and they seemed to be boring their way into his brain. He had shipped thousands of tons to the railway company and there were thousands more to go. In a week or so he would get a formal acceptance of his product, and then— He stretched himself a little wearily and pressed his eyes till a red and compelling blur brought its transient solace. And just then his secretary came in with the bishop's note.

Dear Mr. Clark:

I am off this afternoon for a five day cruise of visits amongst the islands of Lake Huron. Won't you come with me? I know it would be good for me and think it might give you what I'm sure is a much needed rest. My Mercury, I mean the hired man, awaits your answer.

Yours faithfully, JAMES, ALGOMA.

P. S. I never attempt to proselytize my guests.

For a moment he puzzled over the signature, and finally made out that it was the bishop's Christian name followed by that of his diocese, for this was the first letter he had received from the prelate. Then he felt a sudden throb of impulse. He had a natural liking for the bishop and this, with his insatiable appetite for new experiences, prompted an acceptance. He touched the bell, and his secretary reappeared.

"I am going away for five days," he paused, adding with a smile—"on missionary work. I haven't any idea where we are going and don't want to be disturbed. I'll be back before we receive the results of the United Railway Company's tests. That's all."

It was mid-afternoon when the Evangeline, gliding smoothly over the polished surface of the bay, drew in towards the Consolidated dock, and Clark, watching from the shadow of a mountain of bales of pulp assembled for shipment, saw the Indian pilot amidship at the wheel and the bishop, in a big, coarse, straw hat, standing in the slim bow, a coil of rope in his hands and a broad smile on his big sunburnt face.

"Catch!" The bight of the rope whistled through the air and struck smartly at his guest's feet.

The latter laughed, picked it up and made fast. It struck him suddenly that it was curious the bishop should be throwing him a rope. Then he reflected that it was the bishop and not himself who needed help.

The former was very gay, his kindly face alight with amusement and anticipation. Presently came a throb from the engine room, and the Evangeline sheered off down the river, past the new St. Marys where staring red brick buildings shouldered up out of the old time houses, past the See Mouse, while a flag fluttered jerkily down from the tall mast at whose top it flew when the bishop was at home, past the American side, where Clark's big power house stretched its gray length at the edge of the river, and on till they came to the long point that closes the upper reach, and just then both men turned and looked up stream at the vanishing bulk of the huge structures beside the rapids, and the flat line of tremulous foam that marked the rapids themselves. The voice of them was, at this distance, mute.

The yacht glided on and still neither spoke, Clark was full of the thought that, for the second time in seven years, he had deliberately left his work. Four hours ago the thing would have seemed grotesque, but glancing at the bishop's broad back, he realized that here was a friendly interceptor to whom he had been wise to yield. The miles slid smoothly by, and still neither talked. Each was busy with the contented reflection that in the other he had found one who possessed the gift of understanding silence.

The Evangeline rested that evening not far from where Clark had anchored so recently. He sat motionless, breathing in the welcome benison of the spot, till the Indian pilot put out port and starboard lamps whose soft red and green shone steadily into the gathering dusk.

"Is there a mission here?" asked the visitor presently.

"No, but there's the best bass fishing in Lake Huron," grunted the bishop placidly, already busy with rods and bait. "The mission is ten miles on. Now we're going to catch our breakfast—there's an excellent spot just opposite that big cedar."

Clark had not fished much, but he loved it, like most men of intellect, and discovered that he had been steered straight into the best fishing he had ever known. They were small mouthed bass, deep of belly and high of back, and they fought in the brown water over the twitching minnows that dangled from the Evangeline bow and stern.

"I'm glad you came." The bishop smoothed down the spines of a big three pounder ere he gripped it.

"Best thing I ever did. Fishing is a clerical pursuit, isn't it?"

The bishop nodded without turning his head. "Yes, but it's not always for money. We have to bait our hooks according to the season of men's minds. By the way, some of my best friends are in your country."

"Yes?"

"Had a church in Chicago for ten years,—there at the time of the great fire—it stopped a few blocks from my house. I had to marry a devoted couple a day or two later and the wedding fee was a bunch of candles. Glad to get them; whole city in darkness and it seemed suitable that the parson's house should reflect light. You remind me of one of my friends at that time."

"Why and how?" said Clark. He knew so little of himself as appearing in other people's minds.

"This man was a big Chicago importer—look out, you've got another bass—and he was in New York at the time of the fire—heard his warehouses were threatened and bought trainloads of stuff and rushed it through. It arrived while the other stuff was still smoking, and he made much more than he— My dear sir, that's the best fish of the evening, let me look at him."

Clark laid the twitching body of a bass on the teak deck, while the big man came aft, trailing his bait and slowly reeling up his line. As the minnow glimmered in towards the yacht's black side, there came a heavy plunge, the bishop's rod bent double, and the line sang off his reel. He was a famous fisherman, and Clark watched him admiringly. To every ounce of pliant bamboo on his six ounce rod there was, down in the brown water, a pound of savagely fighting weight. Deeper went the big fish and further, but ever the taut line yielded by fractions, and the nearly doubled rod kept up a steady insidious strain. As the bass dashed back, the bishop recovered his nearly spent line while his lips pressed tight and the light of battle shone in his large eyes. For a quarter of an hour the fight lasted, till the great fish floundered once or twice with heavy weariness on the surface, and the angler worked him toward the yacht. Then a bare brown arm shot a landing net underneath his horny shoulder and, with a dexterous twist, the Indian pilot landed him on the deck in a thumping tangle of line, leader and net.

"And that," said the bishop with a deep sigh of content, "will do. We've got supper and breakfast as well."

The night deepened, and in the little saloon host and guest sat down to a supper of fried fish, blueberries and cream. The small, red curtains were drawn, and over the tiny fireplace a binnacle lamp glowed softly. Forward in the bows, the Scotch engineer and the Indian pilot sat conversing in deliberate monosyllables, and in the east a horned moon floated just clear of the ragged tops of encircling pine trees. Clark ate slowly and felt the burden slipping from his shoulders. It was a strange sensation. Across the narrow table towered the bishop, the genius of the place. He was still reminiscent of American experiences and talked as talks a man who is comfortably sure of himself and his companion.

"I don't believe I have any very close personal friends," said Clark presently. "I've moved about too quickly to make them. One meets people in the way of work, and so far as my own employees are concerned, I see them chiefly through their work. I can't let the personal element intrude."

The bishop smiled, remembering something similar he had said himself. "Well, I must say I'm particularly drawn to Americans. Perhaps it's because they suit the Irish, but I seem to find in them a certain intellectual generosity one recognizes at once and appreciates. There aren't so many fences to climb over. And, besides, they appear to understand my cloth."

"Yes?" Clark looked up, keenly interested. He had not thought much about the clerical profession.

"It's quite true. They realize that a parson is a man of like predilections and impulses and weaknesses with themselves, and that a cassock does not stifle the natural and healthy ambitions of the male mammal. Nothing is more trying for the cleric than to be put aside as though he were some emasculated ascetic who was unattracted by merely natural things."

"I hadn't thought of that."

"Very few people have, except the cleric; and he thinks of it a good deal. There is even the tendency to believe that the parson, because he is a spiritually minded man, is incapable of horse sense in practical and public affairs. By the way, don't you smoke?"

Clark smiled and shook his head. "I've never wanted to."

"I did once," chuckled the prelate. "It was a big, black cigar inside a hedge about three miles out of Dublin. I've never smoked since. Now, if I may go back to the clerical question, you'll probably realize that a great many mistakes are made."

"I hadn't thought much about that either."

"Probably not, but it's without question that a good many parsons realize in a year or so that they're not up to their job, especially if it's a city congregation. The young and over enthusiastic rector addressing a church full of shrewd, experienced men of affairs is often in a grievous case. I've sat in the chancel and listened and writhed myself. There's many a poor parson who would make a good engineer, and he knows it."

"Then why shouldn't he change over?" Clark was getting new avenues opened for him in hitherto unexplored directions.

"Because he's ashamed to, and the world has the habit of thinking that the man who has once been a parson is not available for anything else. Suppose one of my missionaries came to you for a job—what would happen?"

"I'd send him to you for a letter of recommendation and then put him to work."

"I believe you would, now, but not a month ago."

"That's quite possible."

"Well, you have no conception that envy may, and sometimes does, exist in a black coated breast."

"But why envy?"

"Because devotion to one cause does not stifle natural aspirations in another. For instance I've often longed for time to do some writing, on my own account. One of my traveling preachers has invented a railway switch and I know he dreams of it and makes sketches on the margin of his sermons. No, my dear sir, the public has doubtless classified us, and possibly correctly, but we are still fanciful, and—" the bishop hesitated and broke off.

"Go on, please." Clark's gray eyes were very penetrating and understanding.

"Possibly I've talked too much about the parson, but there's one thing that is often denied him and he longs for it intensely—companionship with his fellow men. The sacrifice of that one thing hurts more than any other privation. And now that this one-sided symposium on the parson must have taxed your good nature, let's go to bed. We lift anchor at seven-thirty, and I go over the side at seven. There's fifteen feet of water here and a sandy bottom, and if you like we'll get a few more bass first. Good night! I think you'll find everything you want in your cabin. Sleep well."

A little later Clark stepped out on deck and breathed in the ineffable serenity of the scene. A ray of moonlight lay along the inlet like a silver line. As he went down to his cabin he noticed that the other's door had swung open. Inside the bishop was kneeling by his narrow bunk, his face buried in his hands, his broad shoulders bent forward in prayer. Clark's breath came a little quickly at the strangeness of it all and, moving on tip toe, he turned the handle softly. In his own cabin, he lay for an hour staring out of the porthole at the dim world beyond. He tried to think of the works, but they receded mysteriously beyond the interlocking branches of the neighboring pines. They seemed, somehow, less imposing than formerly, and Wimperley and Stoughton and the rest of them were a long way off. There came to him the lullulant lapping of water along the smooth black side of the Evangeline. Presently he dropped into the abyss of sleep, dreamless and profound.



XIX.—THE WEB OF LACHESIS

The sun was shining level through the tree-tops when they began to fish. In fifteen minutes the bishop called a halt, dipped a bucket of water and washed his hands. Clark, still under the spell of this new friendship, saw the great amethyst of the episcopal ring gleaming softly amid the glint of fish scales, and dimly remembered the story of the Man and the Galilean fisher folk whose catch was poor till He told them where to cast. Presently the bishop stripped and went overboard into the brown water with a clean schloop, where he was instantly followed by his guest.

Here they played like schoolboys, shouting and blowing in utter physical abandonment, while the copper colored pilot stared at them with expressionless eyes and wondered mutely why people wanted to get so wet.

The bishop was like an otter, swimming under water a long way to reappear with a sharp whistle in an unexpected place. Soon the first flush of Clark's enjoyment passed. He felt suddenly tired and turned toward the Evangeline, where a small wooden ladder had been let down just athwart the cabin cockpit. And in that instant he felt a sharp and agonizing pain.

"Help!" he called. "Help!!" A deadly stiffness was stealing from foot to knee.

The bishop heard, rolled over on his back and, treading water, saw Clark's face. The lips were puffed out, the head bent back and he was splashing desperately.

"Hang on to it, I'm coming," roared the big man, and, laying his right shoulder forward; began to tear through the water. Like a tug he came, with a bubble of foam around his head, half his face submerged, his powerful arms and legs working like pistons. Such was the power in him that at each stroke his great body seemed to lift and fling itself forward, and behind him broadened a long, diamond shaped ripple that slid whispering to the shore. The next moment sounded a voice, as from a long way off:

"Put your arms straight out—rest your palms on my shoulders. When I turn, trail your body and don't try to do anything. That's it." The bishop was breathing hard, but not in any way distressed.

They moved toward the yacht and Clark felt beneath his hands the working of big, flexible muscles, and the buoyant surge of the practiced swimmer who glides with the minimum of effort and resistance. In five minutes he was scarifying his skin with a rough towel and tingled with renewing circulation.

"You saved my life that time," he said earnestly.

The bishop pulled his shirt over his head. "Well, that's my business, isn't it? and I fancy it's about the only thing I can do for a man like you. Let's have some breakfast. I smell fish."

Clark, in spite of his late experience, ate as he seldom ate, for there were two things at which Indian Joe was a master—pilotage and cooking. The visitor asked for more, silently deciding that his Japanese must go, being no such artist as this.

"You're using royal silver," said his host presently with a grin. "I bought this boat from the agent of a certain august personage for whom she had grown too small, and I got everything complete. She has a bronze propeller and copper rivets. I've got the royal burgee too, and fly it only on special occasions."

The other man smiled and nodded. It did not somehow seem strange to him to be using royal silver in a remote bay on Lake Huron. Something about the bishop made it appropriate. Then they lifted anchor and the Evangeline moved on under a climbing sun and over a laughing sea for ten miles till she nosed into a creaking dock and made fast. Just beyond was the settlement, from which the parson came hurrying down, followed by others. Clark looked at him, a lean, overworked man, with rusty clothes and joy in his face, and remembered for the first time in his life that here was one fashioned in all ways like unto himself.

"I'm off into the country to visit for a few hours," said the bishop, introducing him. "You can come if you like, but it's not a good road, and I would advise you to stay where you are. Joe will take you fishing and there is plenty to read in the bookshelf. I can recommend Henry Drummond or Marcus Aurelius. Good-by!"

He drove off in a rattling buckboard, and the woods swallowed him. A little crowd had gathered in the dock, glancing after the bishop and then down at the slender deck of the Evangeline. The stranger looked up at them, nodded and disappeared. Presently Joe stretched an awning over the long boom of the main mast, and Clark sat in the shade listening to the silence and surveying this isolated village. What, he wondered, could keep people in so forgotten a community, with its unpaved street, its straggling wooden houses, its background of unbroken bush. There was no water power, no big timber, and, from the look of the country, no mineral. He put the thought out of his mind with luxurious deliberation and tried to decipher why a man like the bishop should waste his time here when, without doubt, he could be a shining light in a great city. After a little the reason became clear, and, smiling to himself, he reached up for Marcus Aurelius.

They supped that night at the parsonage, where they yielded to the stark simplicity of new surroundings. The parson with his wife and children regarded the bishop with their eyes in which love and reverence were clearly mingled. At the stranger they looked a little insecurely, for the bishop had, that afternoon, told who he was. They had heard of him already, and in this remote village his person had been invested with mysterious powers. He was a force of which they read, rather than a living, breathing man, so that however he might try to talk affably and communicably, he found himself hedged about with a spiny growth of fame that the others made but little attempt to penetrate. His garment of authority and influence was too great. He was too big and didn't fit.

Later came service in the bare, wooden church, and for the second time he saw the prelate in robes of office. The sun was setting and its level beams filled the tiny edifice with a softened glow. Overhead the sky was like a benison, while the bishop spoke words of cheer and strength that went straight to the hearts of his congregation. He stood, as he always stood, in front of the chancel, a great figure in white and scarlet, with a deep mellow voice that seemed to dissolve in the hush of evening like a lingering caress. Clark, in his corner, sat motionless, touched as he had seldom been touched before. He began to see why the bishop spent his life in this wilderness.

Service done, the Evangeline moved out over a sea that was sheer, flat silver. Indian Joe sat motionless at the wheel, the spokes pressed lightly against his polished palm. At the engine room hatch a voiceless Scotchman smoked a contemplative pipe, and for the rest of it there was only the muffled thud of the propeller, the subdued stroke of the engine and the whisper of split water at the yacht's knifelike stem. Clark did not speak. It seemed as the yacht slipped on, that he was exploring, a kingdom in which the population and their ways were hitherto unknown to him; a domain that was pathetic rather than poor—and remote from his scheme of things. He had given this phase of life no thought till the bishop introduced him to it, and was puzzled that both men and women could be so deprived of the salt of life and yet be apparently content. The bishop's voice broke his reverie.

"Did you ever consider how much those with imagination owe to those who have none?"

Clark started a little, then shook his head. "No, I haven't."

"Isn't it true?"

"It may be—but I don't see what there is to create any obligation."

"Well, you're discharging it every day. You create things primarily for yourself, but actually what you do is to create opportunities for others less endowed with imaginative power. And whatever may be the ultimate scope or result of your work at St. Marys, that is the highest service it will ever perform. And, by the way, my friends seemed a little afraid of you at supper, though I assured them you were perfectly harmless. Do you mind telling me if you got any impressions?"

"About the events of the day?"

"Partly. I'm wondering just what people like these suggest to a man of your sort. Is it all very drab and uneventful?"

"Well," said Clark thoughtfully, "it is something like that, isn't it?"

"I thought so once, but that's just what I don't now admit, and urge that this is a case where we should consider comparative values. Satisfaction is not, after all, so much a matter of the size or quality of the thing that satisfies, as it is of the individual who is affected and his circumstances. Small joys go a long way on Manitoulin Island."

"But are people who live like this not conscious of any deprivation?"

"It's not so much that as it is wonder what it would be like to own certain things or comforts. You don't find much envy in the bush country, but you do find a lot of self-respect. I could tell you things about some Indian friends of mine that would clear your mind, if you happen to think that the only good Indian is a dead one. It seems to me that life in the open, even though a great part of it is spent in exposure and hardship, has certain spiritual compensations."

Clark nodded. "Perhaps."

"Put it this way; you deal with many kinds of men, but do you not always feel better disposed toward a simple soul, say like our friend Fisette, than toward some shrewd person who arms himself at every conceivable point?"

"Yes, I do."

"Well, that's what I feel about my people. Most of them are unarmed and they trust me, and anything I can do seems small in comparison to that trust. You've got a trust too, my friend."

Clark smiled. "That's what my directors lose no opportunity of telling me."

"But who or what is your Director?" asked the bishop, leaning forward earnestly. "You needn't be anxious, I'm not going to sermonize. Your Director is the same as mine, the great Force, call it what you will. It drove me into the church and drove you to what you are, and our first trust is to ourselves—you'll agree with me there—and with that undischarged nothing else can be carried out. Just at this moment I wish I were as competent for my job as you are for yours."

"But, bishop, you're—"

The big man raised his hand. "Not a word, for tonight I feel like Browning's Bishop Blougram who 'rolled him out a mind long crumpled, till creased consciousness lay smooth.' It does me good to rub out the wrinkles occasionally. Now tell me, looking back at the last few years in St. Marys, do you appreciate what you've done?"

"I haven't had much time to look back," said Clark thoughtfully. "The opportunity was there and I took it, then I was fortunate enough to enlist the necessary support. Since that time the district seems to have responded to every conceivable need, and we have been able to fall in step with a natural scheme for developing natural resources, that's all."

The bishop shook his head. "Not quite: it's a great drama you're enacting up there, with the rapids for a setting. They run through it all, don't they?—the changeless, elemental background before which man climbs up on the stage, makes his bow, enacts his part and gives place to some one else. You are sending out multitudes of influences that will never be determined or traced to their result. You once told me that it all began when you overheard a conversation in a train."

"Yes," Clark paused, then added with a laugh, "an example of the importance of small things. You've made your point, bishop."

"Thank you, but I've never been able to decide whether a thing is small or not. Some of the things that you and I prize very highly may actually be of small account."

For a while Clark did not answer. Ever since coming on board the Evangeline he had been conscious of a new atmosphere, tenanted by the spirit of her master, and of a new language which, though its tones were familiar, seemed to be the vehicle of a novel wisdom and understanding. He was impressed with the utter candor of his host, but chiefly with his superlative sympathy with all men. The visitor fell under the influence of a benign nature which, intensely human in all its attributes, proffered its solace to all alike. It was, he concluded, the life function of the bishop to give himself in royal abandonment.

He did not often put himself in the place of other men, but that night, after the Evangeline had slid into a moon spilt harbor amongst the hills, and the bishop explained that he had come here because poor people were apt to overtax themselves in entertaining, the visitor lay on the cock pit cushions and stared long at the starry sky. Nothing important was to be attached to this trip, and yet he felt it to be momentous. He knew he would always remember it, and that the memory would hereafter assert itself in unexpected moments. He admitted being influenced by the bishop and yet felt equipped for all that he had to do without any such influence. But there crept over him the slow conception that life might unexpectedly change, and that under hitherto unimagined conditions he might turn to these hours for the comfort of remembrance.

Three more days of missionary work and the Evangeline turned homeward, Clark took the wheel for an hour, with the bishop beside him.

"I hope," said the latter, "that the trip has been a success for you?"

The amateur pilot gave an involuntary start. The question pitched his mind forward to the works, and he realized that for five days he had forgotten all about them.

"It has been a very great pleasure to me," went on the prelate quietly. "I'm apt to have too much broadcloth and not enough gray tweed in my life. Most of us are in the same case, and one's love of one's work does not suffer by an interest in other things."

"My dear sir, I've benefited enormously. I'm a new man and ready for anything—even the worst." How little did he dream that at that very moment Lachesis was spinning her invisible web.

"Ah! that's what we must always be ready for—or the best, which is sometimes the same thing. Keep her to port a little."

The yacht rounded a long point and came in sight of the works, while Clark experienced a throb of thankfulness that his host had attempted no missionary work on him. He was as good as his word. There had been no proselytizing.

As the vessel reached the dock, they said good-by, each ready to do his job over again, and Clark, with his hand enveloped in the warm clasp, realized much of the secret of the prelate's life, which was no secret at all but just the benignity of a great and tender soul. He stepped over the yacht's side and glanced at his secretary who advanced to meet him with a telegram in his hand, noting that the young man's face was pale and his eyes unusually brilliant.

"This came an hour ago, sir."

With an impatient gesture he opened the folded sheet and read, his heart slowly contracting:

Regret unable to accept first cargo of rails being five thousand tons. These not up to your guarantee and our specifications. Full information this mail with the result of physical and chemical tests.

UNITED RAILWAY COMPANY.

Involuntarily he raised his head. The yacht was backing out, and the bishop, coiling a rope in her bows, straightened up to wave farewell. Automatically Clark waved back, then, with the telegram crumpled in his palm, turned and walked slowly toward his office. Something the bishop had said began to sing in his brain. Could the best and the worst ever be the same thing?



XX.—THE CAR OF PROGRESS HALTS

The paralyzing news had lain in the faithful keeping of a confidential operator and the white faced secretary who had guarded it jealously. The latter followed to the private office. When the door was closed in his face, he went to his own desk and sat blindly at his letters. Clark stood at a big window that commanded the rapids. Deep lines were furrowed suddenly on his face, and his eyes were like sunken bits of cold, gray steel. He felt the gentle vibration of the mills, and through it pierced the words of the telegram like a thin sharp voice that would not be denied. It was fully an hour later that his call sounded for the secretary.

"The rail mill will be closed shortly for temporary alteration. If you are asked anything about it—and you will be—that is all you know. This means that the furnaces must be blown down. I don't anticipate any serious delay. You will repeat this telegram to Philadelphia, and add that I will report more fully in the next twenty-four hours. There's just one thing more. A good deal of importance will attach to your manner and attitude for the next few days. That's all."

The young man nodded, finding it difficult to speak. There was nothing unusual about his leader, except that the eyes were a little more deep set, the voice a shade harder.

A few moments later, Clark stood in the rail mill watching the titanic rolls spew out ribbons of glowing steel. It came over him in a sickening flood that the whole giant undertaking was useless, and instead of the supreme delight he experienced a few months before there was now but a huge mechanical travesty that flouted the unremitting strain and effort of years. He was defacing the everlasting hills with dynamite to make something the commercial world did not want. A surge of protest overcame his spirit, followed by a cynical contempt for the futility of the best efforts of man. Impatiently he walked up to the superintendent of the mill.

The latter touched a grimy hat. "We're on the last ten thousand tons for the United," he said with a note of pride—"the mill's running fine."

"It may be," snapped Clark acidly, "but shut it down. Your rails are no good."

The other man blinked at him. "Eh?"

"Do what you're told," repeated Clark with the least shake in his dominant voice. "The United doesn't want these rails, though some one else will."

Over the superintendent's sooty face crept a look of blank amazement. "Shut down! why?" he floundered helplessly. "I can't, till this heat is through, and there's nothing the matter with the rails."

"Other people say there is, so get the heat through and obey orders." Then, with sudden anger, "Is the job too big for you?"

He turned away abruptly, passing the whirling flywheel, the ponderous cylinders, the glowing ovens, while above him the traveling crane moved like a whining monster across the blackened roof. He hastened, desirous of getting out of the presence of these giants whom he had assembled only in order that they might deride him with their massive proportions.

So on to the towering masses of the furnaces. Here he saw poured a molten charge, and stood fascinated, as always, by the smooth and deadly gleam of molten metal, till, curtly, the same orders were issued. No further charges should be fed in before orders to that effect. Then back to his office, where he cancelled shipments of coke, and sent to the iron mine a curt word that stilled the boom of dynamite and silenced the sharp chatter of the drills.

Gradually through the works spread the chilling news. A slowly thickening stream of Swedes, Poles and Hungarians filed out of the big gates, and Ironville was, in mid-afternoon, populated with a puzzled multitude that repaired automatically to the saloons. Through pulp mills and machine shops, through power and pumping stations, the story went, growing as rapidly as it spread. Time keepers heard it and office clerks, and the crews of tugs and steamships that lay at the big dock below the works. And while rumors were widening every minute, there was a knock at Clark's door and, looking up, he saw the comptroller who stood quietly, with a check for the week's payroll in his hand.

"How much?" The voice was admirably impersonal.

"One hundred and ten thousand." The comptroller was a short fat man, and at the moment quivering with suppressed excitement.

The general manager scribbled his initials on the blue slip, handed it back without a word, and did not even look up as the official went out. A few minutes later he walked slowly through the pulp mill, stopping here and there to speak to superintendents and workmen. The swishing rasp of the great stones and the steady rumble of turbines brought him a sense of comfort. He progressed deliberately, and with his usual keen interest, so that, although hundreds of eyes followed him, not a man could assume that anything had gone seriously wrong. It was an hour in which he found and radiated confidence. Here, at least, was the universal conclusion that all was as it should be. He was on the bank of the power canal when his secretary approached again.

"What is it this time?"

"Hobbs is at the bank with the payroll check, and has just telephoned up. I think you'd better speak to him, sir."

Clark's lips pressed tight and his eyes opened a little. Retracing his steps, he listened to an agitated voice.

"Mr. Brewster states he has no authority to cash this check unless we cover our overdraft. He would like to talk to you."

"Let him."

Again the receiver spoke, while Clark's face grew suddenly very grim. "I think you'd better come up and see me," he said shortly.

Then he listened. "Very well," he snapped. His features were like a mask. "I'm going down to the bank," he went on dryly to the secretary, "for the first time in his life Mr. Brewster is unable to leave his office and come up to mine when invited."

He drove into St. Marys followed by the glances of every man and woman who caught sight of the erect figure. The town was full of confused and conflicting rumors, but nothing had as yet crystallized. The appearance of Clark in mid afternoon at the door of the bank, thickened the air. It was known that people with whom he did business invariably went to him. Not in years had he been to Brewster. But for all of that he seemed as cheerful as usual, and took off his gray hat to Mrs. Worden with accustomed and somewhat formal urbanity. Inside he found Hobbs, his round, soft face looking unhealthily pallid, and Brewster with his jaw stuck out, a determined expression on his young features.

"Well, what's the trouble?"

"Nothing very serious." Brewster spoke with a pleasant accent, but he was confronting the most difficult hour of his life. "Just this check."

"What about it?"

"I can't make any further advances till your present acceptances are met in Philadelphia. We have half a million of them."

"That payroll has got to be disbursed."

"I'm sorry, but I can't cash that check."

The lines on the older man's face tightened and deepened. "Mr. Brewster, we have spent some fifteen millions of capital through your bank. This amount is too small to discuss. Do you realize that, if you persist, the men will go unpaid for the first time in seven years?"