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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And this satisfied him.

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes, sir."

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

"Another canal!" said Belding involuntarily.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Belding nodded. His brain was too confused for speech.

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

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

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

"The toughest thing I ever tackled."

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

"Yes, sir."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I was there last week."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Come in," boomed a deep voice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Is it money?" she said slowly.

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

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

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

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

"Yes," he chuckled contentedly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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