he big bay that stretched
below, the works.

The bulk of the pulp mill loomed darkly into the quiet air, and further
up they could hear the rattle of machine drills hammering into the
great sandstone ledges. Passing the pigmy lock of the old Hudson Bay
Company, they floated a hundred yards from shore and immediately
opposite the blockhouse. Here Elsie lifted her hand, and Belding, with
a queer feeling of resentment, backed water.

The upper part of the house was softly lighted and the windows were
open. Its gabled roof seemed diminutive compared to the structures
which were taking shape close by and, as they looked, there drifted out
the sound of a piano. Clark himself was invisible, but his finger tips
were talking to the glistening keys. Elsie listened breathlessly.
This was the man within the man who now sat plunged in profound
meditation.

Presently the music ceased and Clark's figure appeared at the window.
He was staring at the rapids, and it seemed that as he stared he set up
some mysterious communication that linked his own force and
determination with their irresistible sweep.

On the way back Elsie was very silent and it came upon Belding with
dull insistency that whatever attraction he had hoped to have for the
girl had been merged in the fact that, for the present at any rate, he
was nothing more than a means of satisfying her sudden and, to him,
fantastical interest in the man under whose dominant bidding the color
of so many lives was being modified and blended.

VIII.--IRON

A year later a prospector was slowly pushing his way through the
wilderness some seventy miles northward of St. Marys. It was
springtime and the air was mild, but, while the ridges were already
bare, great banks of snow still lay in the deep folds of the hills
where the sun but touched them at noon hour. The endless lacework of
naked branches now began to be feathered with tender green, and
everywhere the bush was alive with the voices of wild things whose
blood was stirred to mating by the soft caresses of the southerly wind.
Thrusting through a patch of tangled undergrowth, the man reached
higher ground and, advancing to a hillock, stood with his hat off and
his brown face steaming with sweat.

He was of middle age, with short, sturdy frame, a broad face of pale,
copper color, swarthy black brows and a small, stringy mustache. His
feet were enclosed in shoepacks, soggy with water, and he was otherwise
clad in