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

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

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

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

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

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

"You're touching the hidden springs of things that will go on forever."

Elsie's voice was vibrant with feeling. "That's the difference between you and other men I know. You're in the secret."

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

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

"So it's just a matter of recognizing one's destiny and following it?"

he said curiously.

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

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

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

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

Her lips trembled, and Clark, gazing at her, felt an intense yearning.

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

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

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

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

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

XVIII.--MATTERS FINANCIAL

The young manager of the local bank through which Clark transacted his affairs sat late one night in his office. He had just returned from dinner at the big house, where he left his host in an unusually genial and communicative mood. It seemed that Clark's mind, tightened with the continued strain of years, had wished to slacken itself in an hour or two of utter candor, and Brewster had listened with full consciousness that this was an occasion which might never be repeated.

But in his small cubicle, walled in with opaque gla.s.s, Clark's magnetic accents appeared to dwindle before the inexorable character of the statement Brewster now scrutinized. It was the detailed and financial history of each successive company, a history in which birth and bones and articulation were clearly set forth, and what struck the young man most forcibly was the extraordinary way in which each was interlinked with the rest. The combined capital of all was, he noted, twenty-seven million dollars, and greater than that yet reached by the Canadian Pacific Railway. Brewster had known it before, but the bald and c.u.mulative figures in front of him made the fact the more momentous.

Probing still deeper, it became apparent that while the pulp mills made steady profits, these were so adjusted as to form but one link in a chain. In all there were some ten companies, each drawing from the others its business and its surplus. Clark had not been far wrong when he reflected that he might be asking one dollar to do too much, and now the sharp brain of the young manager was coming to the same conclusion.

Behind his office building pa.s.sed Clark's steamships, for there was a transportation company, and into the wilderness Clark's trains plunged with unfailing regularity. Up at the works the blast furnaces were vomiting flame and smoke, and the rail mill was nearly completed.

Baudette was sending down train loads and rafts of wood, and at the iron mine dynamite was lifting thousands of tons of ore. The entire aggregation of effort and expenditure had been so systematically interwoven that Brewster there and then decided that if one link in the chain should part, the whole fabric of the thing would dissolve. It was true that he made no advances without authority from his headquarters, but he had long been aware that Clark's was the largest commercial account in Canada and, he reflected gravely, it all went through his own office. Two days later he reached Toronto, and asked audience of his general manager.

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

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

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

There's the sulphur extraction plant that doesn't extract sulphur, and--"

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

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

"Have you seen Wimperley lately?"

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

"Say anything particular?"

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

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

"Of all companies?"

"Of course."

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

"And to us?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes?"