Chapter VI: Part 6

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 dénouement 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.

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 reëstablished 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."