Snow was on the ground and the river crisping with tinkling sheets of spreading ice when Clark again reached St. Marys and with characteristic energy laid his first plans. These were to supply the town with water and light, and the fact that the well remembered public promise was thus to be redeemed reassured the citizens as nothing else could have done. It was true that heavy work was impossible before spring, but Belding, on instructions, deposited with the town council an imposing set of blue prints which showed water pipes and electric circuits radiating through every part of the town.

It was a week or so later that one day in the office Belding looked up as though he had been called and caught his chief's penetrating gaze.

"Are you engaged, Belding; I mean to be married?" There was a twinkle in the gray eyes.

"No, sir."

"Want to be?"

"No, sir."

"Anything to think of except the work?"

Belding shook his head. He had already learned never to show surprise.

"Then suppose I share your quarters for the rest of the winter. I can't stand that hotel any longer."

The engineer flushed. Already he had put Clark away in the corner of his mind as one not comparable to any man he had ever met. His directness, his versatility, the suggestion of power that lay behind power,—all these Belding had found in him. And this was a little like being asked to share quarters with the Pope.

"I'm afraid you won't be very comfortable, sir." Belding had the use of a big house, but it was hard to heat.

"I'll be better off than where I am," said Clark, and that settled it. He had apparently conceived for the young man as much liking as he cared to show for any one. Presently he laughed.

"You're wondering why I asked whether you were going to be married."

"I am—rather."

"Well, it's only because I feel a bit superfluous to any one in that condition."

"Then you're not married yourself?" said Belding involuntarily.

Clark's eyes hardened. "No," he answered with extreme deliberation, "I am not, I am too busy." Presently his mood changed and he added provocatively, "But you're doomed, I see it in your face."

Belding smiled. "I haven't met her yet."

"It isn't a case of your meeting her; it's the other way on. You may never know it, but she will."

Belding glanced at him, puzzled. This was not the Clark he knew ten minutes ago. And just then the other man pulled himself up.

"I think I'd move that mill about a hundred feet west," he went on, bending over a drawing. "It will shorten the head race and save money."

The engineer nodded and drew a long breath. He had expected to get a glimpse of the inner man, but the door was banged in his face.

That winter was, for him, an adventure in regions fascinating and remote. It is probable that at the time there was not on the North American continent a man more highly endowed than Clark with gifts of sheer psychological power. Belding, young in his world, could not recognize it as such, but he fell the more completely under the wizard-like spell of his companion's imagination. The days, shortened by late sun and long nights, passed with early journeys to the temporary office which Clark had built at the canal, where they compiled endless surveys and plans in which the scope of the future was graphically depicted. On these miniature spaces factory shouldered against factory and mill against mill. The canal doubled in size, and, stupendous as it all seemed, Belding could see no reason why these things should not shortly exist. It was vastly different from former days.

As the weeks passed, he began to get Clark in clearer prospective. It became forced on him that this hypnotic stranger had no desire except that of creation. It seemed that his supreme determination was to win from the earth that which he believed it offered, and express himself in steel and stone and concrete, in the construction of great buildings and in the impressive rumble of natural power under human control. There was talk of many things, colored by keen, incisive comments from this man of many parts, but never once did he put forward the subject of wealth or the means of its amassing. The possession, or at least the direction, of great sums was imperative to him, but he valued them only for what they could achieve, and Belding always got the sensation of his new approach to subjects hitherto deemed well worn, and that remarkable mixture of impatience and intuitive power which characterized his analysis. Again there were evenings when Clark did not want to talk, but slipped off to the piano. Then the engineer saw another man within the man, one who, plunged in profound meditation, sat for hours, while his strong yet delicate fingers explored the keys, interpreting the color of his mood and drawing, as it were, from some mystical source that on which the subtle brain was nourished. And these were periods which the other soon learned were not to be interrupted.

They were constantly asked out and entertained with old time hospitality, Clark being the object of supreme curiosity in St. Marys, and more often than not he slipped away early, leaving Belding on duty. It was on these occasions that the contrast between his chief and others stood out most prominently, there being nothing, it seemed, that any one could do for him. His principal desire was to be let alone.

It was one night at the Wordens' that Belding caught what he took to be evidence of a heart that was fastidiously concealed. Clark, in front of the fireplace, was listening to the judge dilate on the ancient history of St. Marys, and that of lost and silent tribes who once paddled along the shore and lifted their delicate bark canoes around the tumbling rapids. Worden was a wise, old man with a certain gentle dignity, and his wife, a dainty, middle-aged lady with slowly graying hair and kindly eyes.

"There was a good deal of bloodshed about," ruminated the judge. "Of course the Jesuit got here first and performed the mysteries of the Host in front of the natives. There were Indian wars and a good deal of torturing went on up on your property, Mr. Clark. Then the French and English traders shot each other from behind trees, where I understand you are going to build your pulp mill, and the survivors took the furs and struck off for Montreal in canoes, a matter of some six hundred miles. After that the Red River Company and the Hudson Bay got at loggerheads."

"In short," put in Clark, "I've picked out a veritable battle ground. By the way, who is this, if I may ask?" He lifted a photograph from the mantel.

Mrs. Worden smiled proudly. "Our daughter, Elsie. She's seventeen now and we won't see her for two years. She's in the West with her aunt."

"Oh!" said Clark. His brows pulled down and he scanned the print with close attention. "She has imagination I take it."

"Too much for her own comfort," remarked the judge.

Clark did not answer but dropped into one of those thoughtful silences which, while they did not seem to exclude, made it nevertheless appear presumptuous to rouse him.

"Too much imagination," he repeated presently. "Is that possible?"
Then, after another long stare, "It's a very unusual face."

Mrs. Worden looked very happy. "We're going to take great care of
Elsie when we get her back. She had this long, delightful invitation
and we let her go because we thought she'd see more than she could in"
St. Marys, but she writes that it's even quieter."

"The old St. Marys is nearly at an end and your daughter will find food for her imagination when she gets back. May I show this to Mr. Belding?"

The young man took the photograph with a queer sense of participation in something he did not understand. He saw a broad, low forehead, masses of soft and slightly curly hair, eyes that looked beautifully and wistfully, out from beneath finely arched brows and a mouth that lacked nothing in humorous suggestion. Puzzling for an instant what it was that had attracted his impersonal chief, he heard the latter saying good night with customary abruptness.

"Come along, Belding; we've got a long day ahead of us. The directors will be here to-morrow."

The judge was vastly interested. "So St. Marys is in actual touch with
Philadelphia?"

"Very much so, and in about two years St. Marys will loom very large in
Philadelphia. Good night and thank you."

The wind was stinging and they drove home rather silently. Arriving at the big house, Clark went to the piano and played for a moment. The music ceased as suddenly as it began and, warming himself at the great stove in the hall, Belding heard a short laugh and an exclamation. "Too much imagination," exploded Clark. The tone was one of utter incredulity. At that the young man felt curiously truculent. Elsie was only seventeen, while Clark was certainly not less than thirty-five. Then the latter reappeared, rubbing his chilled fingers.

"The piano is too stiff with cold to talk. By the way, Worden was talking about the bishop. What bishop?"

Belding told him what he knew. "He's an Irishman and a fine man. He works this part of his diocese from St. Marys in the summer. One hears all kinds of stories about him from the woods and the islands. He's got a sense of humor and is a good sportsman, but I've only met him once or twice. Just now he's over in England raising money to buy a small yacht to navigate himself when he's traveling on duty, and weather won't stop him if he gets it. You'll see him next spring."

Clark seemed interested. "I don't know many parsons but that doesn't describe them to me. A sportsman and a sense of humor, eh? It sounds like a hunting parson. I thought they were all dead."

"This one isn't."

"St. Marys begins to offer more than I expected," smiled his chief.
"Are you going to bed, or will you sit here and freeze to death?"

Riggs, Stoughton, and Wimperley came up next day. Clark met them at the station, where a bitter wind was droning down from the north, and Belding, by engineering of a high order, made room for them at his quarters. Then they drove out to the canal, and with Clark climbed the icy embankment while the latter expounded the situation.

"There," he said cheerfully, "will be the first power house, and there mill number one."

Riggs, a small thin-blooded man, peered at the glassy landscape. "Splendid," he chattered, while Stoughton pulled his fur collar over his ears and set his back to the wind.

"Up at the north end,—you can see it better if you step a little this way—will be the head gates. That railway trestle—you see that trestle don't you, Wimperley?—"

Wimperley pulled himself together, but his feet had lost all feeling.
"Yes, any one could see that."

"Well, that will be replaced by a steel bridge at the railway's expense. We propose to widen the canal at that point to one hundred feet at the bottom, and now—" here he seized the unfortunate Stoughton and swung him so that he faced into the chilling blast—"I want to point out the booming ground for logs."

Stoughton muttered something that sounded like strong condemnation of all logs, but Clark did not seem to hear him.

"They'll come round that point, swing into the bay and feed down this way to the mill. You get that, don't you?"

They all got it, at least so they earnestly assured the speaker who stood with his overcoat half unbuttoned, his cap on the back of his head and apparently oblivious of the temperature. This frigid and desolate scene had no terrors for him. Beneath the icy skin he discovered its promise.

"There'll be two booms—one for pulp wood and the other for hard wood for the veneer mills. You make hard wood float by driving plugs of lighter wood into both ends of the log. And now, if you'll step down this way, I'll show you where the dredges will start work."

"Look here," said Riggs in a quavering voice, "what's the matter with my cheek? I can't feel it."

Clark glanced at him and shook with sudden laughter. "Only a bit of frost bite,—perhaps we'd better go back to the office. It's a pity, though,"—here he hesitated a little—"there's quite a lot more to see."

Whereupon Riggs and the other two at once assured him that unless they sought shelter forthwith they would flatly refuse to authorize the expenditure of any more money whatever in a country as blasted as this. After which they repaired to the office, where Belding waited with his blue prints and Clark outlined the possible future. As he put it, these developments were only possible and depended on what that future might bring forth. But as he talked, Belding, for one, knew that the whole magnificent program had been definitely determined in that astonishing brain.

They drove back in the open sleigh and the horses, chilled in the cold, sent the snow flying about their ears. There was but little talk and it was not until they drew abreast of a stone building that Stoughton spoke.

"Nice jail you've got here," he remarked with a grin. "Looks as if they had been expecting our crowd."

Clark laughed. "It's the home of the only pessimist I have found in
St. Marys."

"Then let's drop in and convert him." Stoughton was feeling warmer, and the keen, dry air and brilliant sun affected him like wine.

There was an instantaneous shout of approval, and three school boys in the shape of the three most influential men of Philadelphia rolled happily out of the sleigh. Riggs turned with mischief in his eye and a bright red patch on his cheek.

"Come on, Clark; we need something like this after the dose you have given us."

At the trampling of feet, Manson looked out of the window, then stepped deliberately to the door. The next minute Clark was busy introducing. "Mr. Manson, this is Mr. Wimperley, auditor of the Columbian Railway Company; Mr. Riggs, president of the Philadelphia Bank, and Mr. Stoughton, of the American Iron Works. We're all cold and cast ourselves on your mercy. They've had enough power canal for to-day."

Manson waved them in with just the gesture with which he motioned a prisoner into the dock. It was the only gesture he knew. His brain was working with unwonted rapidity, and he glanced questioningly at Clark, but the face of the latter was impassive. The visitors grouped themselves round the big box stove that was stuffed with blazing hardwood.

"Lived here long, Mr. Manson?" hazarded Riggs, stretching his thin fingers to the heat.

"All my life, gentlemen, and I don't want anything else."

"You haven't been in jail for that time?" put in the irrepressible
Stoughton.

The big man relaxed to a smile. "I've been in charge here for the last twenty-five years, and I like it."

The three glanced at him with a sudden and genuine interest. The man was so massive; his hair so black, and, at the age of fifty, still unstreaked with gray. His face was large and strong, with a certain Jovian quality in cheek, ear, and chin. He suggested latent physical powers that, if aroused, would be tremendous.

"Find it pretty quiet?" went on Stoughton.

"Yes, but that's what I like."

"Then you don't entirely approve of our plans up at the rapids? At least, so Mr. Clark tells me."

Manson's glance lifted and went straight into Clark's gray eyes.

"No, I don't believe in them, if," he added, "I can say so without offense."

Riggs stripped off his heavy fur coat, and turned his back to the stove.

"Just why, may I ask?"

"Well, I have a feeling you'll spoil St. Marys. It's just right as it is. We haven't much excitement and I reckon we don't want it. We're comfortable, so why can't you let us alone? I like the life as it is."

"You'll live faster after we get going," chuckled Wimperley.

"Perhaps, but we won't live so long. I've had a lot of men through my
hands who tried to live faster, and it didn't agree with them—not that
I'm meaning—" The rest was lost in a riot of laughter, out of which
Wimperley's voice became audible.

"If things go as we propose and expect, the people of St. Marys will profit very considerably,—there will be remarkable opportunities."

"Meaning that,—" a new light flickered in Manson's black eyes for a fraction of a second and disappeared.

"Meaning that during the transformation of a village into a city a number of interesting changes take place."

"Maybe, but such things can't affect me very much."

"Well, possibly not, but I've an idea they will. I'm afraid we can't let St. Marys alone, Mr. Manson, and a little later on you'll understand why. This land, for instance, between us and the river, is vacant."

Manson's eye slowly traversed the two hundred yard width of the open field that lay just south of the road. It was perhaps half way between the rapids and the center of the village.

"Yes, I think Worden owns it, but I know that no one wants it."

"Ah!" said Stoughton with a little laugh; "and now we must be getting on. Good-by, and thank you for saving our lives, even if you have had a crack at our project."

There was a sound of laughing voices on the porch and a jangle of sleigh bells that dwindled toward the village, but Manson did not seem to hear them. He stood blocking up the window, his hands thrust deep in his pockets, staring at the vacant lot across the street.

Dinner that night cost Belding much searching of soul. "There'll be three more," Clark had said, and forgotten all about it, but when the Philadelphians sat down Belding's heart sank. On the table was a leg of mutton, placed hastily by an agitated servant lest it freeze between kitchen and dining room. Even while Belding carved it the gravy began to stiffen. Behind Clark was a glowing fireplace, ineffectual against the outside temperature, the windows were white with frost and the whole house seemed to creak.

"Have some mutton," said the young man desperately.

Riggs rubbed his thin hands. "Thanks, I'm very fond of mutton. Do you mind if I put on my overcoat? The floor seems a little cold." He disappeared and returned muffled to the ears.

"You'd better hurry up with your food," said Clark soberly. "The human stomach cannot digest frozen sheep." He glanced at Wimperley and Stoughton. "What's the matter with you fellows?"

The two visitors coughed and apologized and went in search of their overcoats. Clark began to laugh. "And to think that you three are going back to furnaces and steam heat. Do you realize what Belding and I are going through on your behalf?"

They got through the meal somehow, but Belding was utterly abashed. The visitors played with the congealing mutton, poked at forbidding potatoes, absorbed large quantities of scalding tea and then hastened back to the big stove. Belding felt a hand on his shoulder.

"It's my fault. We should have let them go to the hotel. I suppose we're used to it, they're not."

Presently, Wimperley began to yawn. "I'm going to bed."

Riggs glanced apprehensively upstairs, where it was even colder than below. "I'm going to sleep in my clothes. My God! pajamas on a night like this. Clark, what are you made of?"

In ten minutes the big stove was deserted, and Clark went from room to room tucking in his shivering visitors.

V.—THE BEGINNING OF A NEW ERA

It was not till spring came and the earth relaxed her stiff and reappearing bones that Clark really got to work, and then arrived the first battalions of that great influx which was soon to follow. Up at the rapids men and machinery became visible as though by magic. Belding had a curious sensation as he saw the product of his former plans well nigh obliterated in the larger excavation which now began to take shape. His earlier efforts took on their due proportion, and he smiled at the contrast, reveling in his opportunity for the full exercise of his ability. But it is probable that neither Belding nor any others amongst the leading men who, in time, were gathered into the works, realized to what a degree they were animated by the mesmeric influence of Clark.

By this time Bowers, another local appointment, was the legal representative of the Company, and the repository of great intentions which he guarded with scrupulous fidelity. Clark was redeeming his promise not to import that which the town could provide. And then he met the bishop.

He saw the broad-shouldered, black-coated figure contemplating a steam shovel that was gnawing at the rocky soil beside the rapids. The bishop was a big man with a handsome head, well shaped legs adorned with episcopal gaiters, and a broad, deep chest. It was universally admitted that a less ample breast could not have contained so great a heart.

"Good day, sir." Clark involuntarily lifted his hat. The bishop held out a firm white hand. "I've heard of you, Mr. Clark, and am glad to see that Mahomet has come to his mountain. It's a little like a fairy tale to me."

"I hope it may prove as attractive."

"But I believe in fairies, we need them nowadays."

Clark smiled. "I'm afraid that St. Marys doesn't believe in them as yet, but I'll do what I can."

"I suppose you've met every one here in the course of the winter?"

"Most I think. As a matter of fact one hasn't much time."

"That's a new thing in winter in the North. Now show me what's going on, I'm vastly interested."

There was nothing that could have suited Clark better, and the two tramped about for an hour. At the end of it they stood near the head of the rapids and watched a coughing dredge tear into the soft bottom.

"I used to come up here to fish," said the bishop thoughtfully, "and once killed a six pound trout on a six ounce rod, but now you're doing the fishing, and so it goes. Do you expect to begin operations in the woods next winter?"

"Yes."

"Then I'll need some more missionaries. You're making a lot of work for me, but I like it."

His companion glanced up with sudden interest. They both liked work. It had been evident for an hour past in the prelate's keen questions. It occurred to Clark that the influence of his own passion for creation promised to affect a large number of people. But he had never dreamed of missionaries, and now the thought amused him.

"I see young Belding over there," said the bishop as the engineer passed with a transit over his shoulder. "Yes, my chief engineer."

"A good chap and I'm glad he has the opening. I don't know that he's got much imagination, but a valuable man as I see him. I have an idea," he added quizzically, "that you will supply all the imagination that is necessary."

Clark laughed. "I hope to."

"Had I not gone into the church I would have been a writer or an engineer," said the bishop slowly. "They have always seemed kindred pursuits, and I should have liked to be able to point to something physical and concrete and say 'I made it.'"

Clark was a little puzzled. He had it in mind that the bishop's achievements would be, perhaps, more enduring than his own. He tried to put this into words.

The big man shook his head. "I hope I am making my mark, but who can say? You affect the color of men's lives and I try to reach the complexion of their spirits." He paused for a moment, then added, "But between us we ought to do something. Good-by, and I hope you'll come to one of my garden parties. I hear you don't care for society, but you'll like my strawberries, and in the meantime I trust that all will prosper. Even if St. Marys does not realize all this, does it matter?"

"Not in the slightest."

The bishop strode off. A few paces away he halted. "I'm no Moslem but
I'm very glad to meet Mahomet," he called back; "good-by."

In June the general manager, for as such Clark was now known, gave a luncheon at the works, which was to remain long in the mind of at least one of the participants. By this time he himself was beginning to withdraw to that seclusion which added much to the fascination of his personality. When his guests arrived they were turned over to Belding for a tour of inspection, and then, filled with interest and surprise, sat down to the meal Clark had had prepared in the small marquee. Now he appeared himself, the genius of the place, and sat at the head of the table.

Looking back at the curious relationship in which this man stood to the people of St. Marys, it seems that he liked them more than he cared to express, for the expression of any sentiment was strange to his lips. He could do much for them, and did it, while, at the same time, he asked nothing for himself. When not in action, Clark was particularly silent, but when really in action he approached his subject with obvious joy and interest, and coupled with this was his natural instinct for impressive and dramatic situations. Something of this had been recognized by Filmer and the others who came to lunch, so that, afterwards, when he threw out a hint, the only one on record, it met with immediate attention. He was talking to Worden when his eye drew Filmer into the conversation.

"I have been wondering whether any of you gentlemen have bought any land?"

The effect was that of a stone thrown into a pool, and one could see the ripples of interest spreading. But it was so unexpected that there followed a little silence, broken presently by a laugh from Filmer.

"What land?"

Clark waved a casual hand north and east. "Any land over there."

He got no immediate reply. The minds of his guests were traversing the flat fields in which cattle grazed, that lay between the rapids and the town.

"You have seen to-day something of what we propose to do, but only some of it," he went on. "What's the present population of St. Marys?"

"About sixteen hundred," said Filmer thoughtfully.

"Well, gentlemen, assume that what you have seen is but the beginning, only the breaking of the ground. You may take it from me, you are safe in that. The population of St. Marys, five years from to-day, should be,—" here he paused for an impressive moment—"sixteen thousand, and in ten years, twenty-six thousand. Now where are those people going to live? Mr. Manson, here, doesn't take me quite seriously, but you, Judge, can you answer me; or you, Mr. Filmer? A good deal of it will fall on your shoulders."

"I don't doubt you," answered the mayor, "but I can use all my money in my business."

"As for me, I'm a government official and haven't any," added Worden, with a tinge of regret.

"Money has been borrowed before this"—Clark's tones were distinctly impersonal—"the bank is good and so is the future of the town, as I see it."

"Why don't you buy some yourself?"

"I don't want any more money," said Clark very simply, "but, gentlemen, I don't assume that every one feels that way. From this window I can see farm lands that can be bought for forty dollars an acre on easy terms, and how would you feel if, after two or three years, it changed hands at a thousand? I merely mention this because I've seen it take place elsewhere. Now I'm not going to say that it's going to be worth a thousand, and I'm not persuading you. I never persuade any one, at least," he added with a little smile, "not in St. Marys. I only draw your attention to the circumstances and leave the rest of it, of course, to your own judgment."

"Then you suggest that we buy?" came in Dibbott.

"Nothing of the kind. It's a matter of indifference to me whether you gentlemen do the buying or some one else. All I can prophesy is, that it's going to be done, but not by me or my associates. We have enough to occupy our attention for some time to come."

Manson edged a bit nearer. "The idea is that while you're investing millions, we take no risk in investing hundreds, eh?"

"I made no such inference. You will remember that so far as St. Marys is concerned I have depended on the town for nothing since my first proposal was accepted."

Dibbott nodded. "That's right. I reckon we're going to be a residential suburb to the works."

Clark smiled a little. "I lean on just four things, and St. Marys supplied none of them."

"What are they?"

"Natural laws, physical geography, ample financial backing, and the need of the world for certain manufactured products. And," he concluded quizzically, "you'd better forget that I said anything about land."

There was something suggestively final about this, and presently the group moved off, loitering across the flat, untenanted fields. Manson was in the rear, decapitating daisies with his heavy oak stick. A few minutes later Clark looked up and saw the chief constable's bulk filling the doorway. He waited placidly.

"Did you mean just what you said about that land?" Manson's voice sounded a little sheepish, "because I've got a bit saved up, and—"

"Mr. Manson," struck in Clark, "you may approve of me personally, but I know that you don't believe in my project. You've been at no pains to conceal that and I respect you for it, but that being the case why should you, of all men, be interested in land? No, no, don't protest. I don't mind what you think and you've a perfect right to your own opinion. What did I say about land? Did I advise you to buy?"

"No, but you evidently wondered why we didn't."

Clark laughed outright. "I wonder at many things, that's my privilege, and anything I said just now is in contradiction to your judgment. You strike me as being a man of strong views, so by all means hold on to them."

But Manson's eyes were turned fixedly on the main chance and he could not look away. "Of course, I may be wrong," he began awkwardly, "but—"

"And, of course, I may be too, and now you'll excuse me, I've a good deal to attend to."

Very slowly the chief constable took his way to town. Like many who came in contact with Clark he had conceived the impression of a strong and piercing intelligence that, while it gave out much, withheld more; and it was what he imagined was withheld that now piqued and stimulated the austerely masked project he had had in view ever since Clark's directors had so breezily invaded his office months before. Manson was, in truth, an example of those who, externally impassive and unemotional, harbor at times a secret and consuming thought at variance with all outward semblance, and, keeping this remotely hidden, feed it with all the concentrated fire of an otherwise inactive imagination. That afternoon he quietly secured an option on a portion of the fields across which he walked so stolidly, and, with this as a beginning, turned his thoughts to the acquisition of more and more land. Simultaneously his expressed views on the outcome of Clark's activities became more pessimistic than ever.

Early that summer the streets of St. Marys were torn with trenches and the glass fronts of the wooden stores trembled with the vibration of blasting. The pipe lines followed exactly the route laid out by the blue prints Belding had long since deposited with the town council, and so well known was this route that the slightest variation would have been pounced upon instantly. Clark, it appeared, did not take much interest in the work, but turned it over entirely to the engineer, his own imagination having moved to other things.

New faces in the town ceased to create comment, and, what was more to the point, mention of St. Marys began to appear in metropolitan papers. These were read with the peculiar thoroughness of those who, for the first time, found themselves of definite interest to the outside world. Simultaneously the air became full of prophecy, rambling and inchoate. The citizens had not yet come to regard developments as being in any particular their own. They had—for the best reasons—put no money in, but now began to profit by changed conditions. The works were still a thing apart, a new and somewhat romantic area from which anything, however startling, might any day materialize. Sometimes a few Indians paddled up to trade and, leaving Filmer's store, would slip silently up stream, and edging into the backwater at the foot of the rapids, lay their paddles across the thwarts and stare silently at the great structures that began to arise. And this, in a way, was the attitude of most of the folk of St. Marys. They were in it but not of it, and the long somnolence of the past was too tranquil to be easily dispelled. But in spite of their indifference the masterful hand of Clark had set the town definitely on the industrial map. A little later, the water was turned on and rows and rows of electric lights glittered down the streets. It was just about this time that Clark summoned Belding and told him that he desired a house.

This command was, in a way, so intimate that Belding looked foolish.
"What kind of a house?" he said awkwardly.

Clark leaned back in his chair. "You know how, years ago, the Hudson Bay Company built block houses for their factors? Well, I want one such as the company used to build, and I expect to be ready to occupy it within six weeks."

Belding had learned not to ask too many questions, so, for a moment thought hard. "Where?" he ventured.

"You remember where the old Hudson Bay lock is,—just a hundred feet beyond that. By the way, do you know how to build a block house?"

Belding got a little red. He had designed power houses and pulp mills and canals and head gates, but a block house baffled him.

"In those days," began Clark ruminatively, "they were places of defense. Two stories, the bottom one of stone so that the Indians couldn't set fire to it. That part is eight feet high and had loopholes. On top is the other story built of logs, and, by the way, I want my logs peeled and varnished, and with a pitched roof. That part overhangs the other by about five feet all round, and that was to make it possible to drop things on the Indians if they did get up to the loopholes. Got the idea? And, by the way, I want the Hudson Bay lock cleaned out and rebuilt just as it was before. No cement—but random masonry and gates of hewn timber—they hewed everything a hundred years ago—grass around it and a sign saying what it was and when. Fix it up and make a job of it—that's all, and make that block house basement of field stone—you can see why."

Whereupon Clark turned to a pile of letters and telegrams and promptly forgot all about Belding.

In six weeks, to a day, he moved in, and it is a question whether any of his subsequent achievements occasioned such interest in St. Marys. Old inhabitants were there who had memories of the Hudson Bay Company and the thirty foot bark canoes that once voyaged from Lake Superior, and, treading the upper reaches of a branch of the rapids, slid into the old lock and were let gingerly down while the crew held their paddles against the rough stone walls of the tiny but ancient chamber.

Now the thing in its entirety had been recreated. The block house sat squat beside the lock, with its mushroom top projecting just as in years before. Clark, it seemed, was, after all traditional, and not one who lived entirely in the future, and with this touch of romance he took new attributes. His Japanese cook inhabited the lower story through which one entered to mount to the main floor. Inside the place revealed the taste of the man of the world. It looked pigmy beside the enormous structures which began to rise hard by, but was all the more diminutively impressive. One passed it on the way to the works, and often by night drifted out the sound of Clark's piano mingling with the dull boom of the rapids. For it would seem that these were the two voices to which the brain of this extraordinary man took most heed.