ne 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 glass, 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
cumulative 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