f Superior, then down stream to
the tail of the rapids that roared half a mile further on. It came to
him that nothing is so ugly as a well meant effort which has been left
unfinished. Where he stood there had, a year or so before, been little
rivulets which, escaping from the mighty flood of the rapids, lost
themselves in thickets of birch, hemlock, and cedar, and tinkled and
leaped musically to the lower stretches of the river, whilst great
trout lay winnowing their currents of white water. But of this beauty
there was now but a disordered gash, a hundred feet wide and a thousand
feet long, where rusting tools were scattered amongst mounds of
splintered rock that lay in piles just as the blast of dynamite had
left them. An untidy ruin, thought Clark, who had his own ideas of how
things should be put away.

But he was, nevertheless, intensely interested, scanning it all
shrewdly. He picked up fragments of stone, and, breaking them,
examined their texture with the utmost care. Once or twice he walked
along the top of the unfinished embankment throughout its entire
length, running a keen eye over the outlines of the excavation. After
half an hour which concluded with one long concentrated stare, he
pushed on deliberately through the soaked and tangled undergrowth till
he came to the edge of the rapids themselves. Here he sat on a rock
and looked long and earnestly, and so motionless was he that, after a
little while, he seemed to blend completely with earth, sky, and water.

Immediately at his feet the rush of the river grasped at the rough
shore as though to pluck it into the deeps, and here were eddies in
which he could see the polished stones at the bottom. But further out,
where the full weight of water began to be felt, were the first of the
great, white horses that stretched to the other shore, a tossing,
leaping, irresistible herd. Under the great bridge at his right, the
river took its first dip, a smooth and shining slope, streaked with
tiny furrows of speed that wrinkled like waving metallic lines. Below
that came the rapids in their first fury, with scattered cellars into
which the flood swept to uprear itself in a second into pyramids of
force and foam. This seemed to fascinate Clark, and he peered with
unwinking eyes till a sharp clatter just over his head caused him to
look up. Still he did not move his body, and a kingfisher on a branch,
after regarding him for an instant with bright suspicio