aterial 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 th