ed back into the private car.

Two days later the chief chemist of the works stood beside the general
manager's desk looking from the nickel samples into Clark's animated
face.

"These are from Sudbury," the latter was saying, "where they waste
thousands of tons of sulphur a year, and it costs them a lot to waste
it. I want the sulphur to make sulphite pulp."

"Yes?" The reply was a little uncertain.

"To buy what we want is out of the question at the present price. In
Alabama and Sicily they are spending a lot of money to get sulphur; in
Sudbury they're spending a lot of money to get rid of it. The thing is
all wrong."

"Have we any nickel mine, sir?"

"No, but that's the small end of it. I want you to analyze this ore
and see if you can devise a commercial process for the separation of
nickel from sulphur and save both. If you can, I'll buy a mine.
Incidentally we'll produce some pretty cheap nickel. Get busy!"

The chemist nodded and went out, and Clark, glancing after him, fell
into profound contemplation. He himself was neither engineer, chemist
nor scientist, but had a natural instinct for the suitable uses of
physical things. Thus, though without any advanced technical training,
his brain was relieved from any consciousness of difficulties which
might be encountered in the working out of the problems he set for
others with such remarkable facility. He was, in truth, a practical
idealist, who, ungrafted to any particular branch of effort, embarked
on them all, radiating that magnetic confidence which is the chief
incentive toward accomplishment.

The visit of the Toronto financiers had been a success. Clark went
round with them, unfolding the history of the works. Nor was this by
any means the first tour he had made with similar intent. It was now
an old story with him to watch the faces of men reflect their gradual
surrender to the spell of his mesmeric brain. What the Torontonians
saw was physical and concrete, and, as their host talked, they
perceived the promise of that still greater future which he had put
before them. Here, they decided, was not a speculation, but an
investment of growing proportions. Then from the works to the
backwoods by the new railway, where was iron by millions of tons and
pulp by millions of cords, the foundations on which were built the
gigantic structures at St. Marys. So they had gone back in the glow of
that sudden conversion which in its nature is more