r one time Arcadia beside Pittsburg,
and invested their own persons with a new sense of importance.

Clark, watching the fruition of a seven year dream, felt thrilled as
never before. Here, in this heat and mechanical tumult, was being
forged the last link in the chain into which he had hammered his entire
strength and spirit. It was a good thing, he reflected, to make pulp
and ship it on his own steamships, but this was the biggest, deepest
and most enduring thing of all. Some men at such a moment would have
felt humble, but he recognized only the unfolding of an elemental drama
in which he played his own particular role. A few weeks later he
closed a contract with a great railway company for a million dollars'
worth of his new product, which he unhesitatingly guaranteed would live
up to the most exacting specifications.

The new plant had settled down to the steady drive of work when the
mayor of St. Marys, walking up the street in a mood of peculiar
satisfaction, saw just ahead of him the bulky form of the chief
constable. He stepped a little faster and laid a detaining hand on the
broad shoulder.

"Arrest yourself for a minute," he chuckled. "How's our town pessimist
feeling this fine morning?"

Manson glanced sideways. "I suppose you want to rub it in. Well, I
don't know that my opinions have changed very much."

"Takes more than a few thousand tons of rails to move you, eh? But
isn't Mahomet going to come to the mountain at last?"

Manson shook his head.

"If he doesn't the mountain will come to Mahomet--and crush him,"
continued Filmer gayly, then, his mood changing, "but honestly, old
man, why don't you drop your gloomy views? You've an excellent chance
right now, and, besides, they're getting rather amusing."

"I've a right to my own opinions."

"Naturally, we all have, but you don't act up to them--at least you
didn't."

Manson glowered at him with quick suspicion. "What's that?"

"Your left hand knows what your right hand doeth--every time,--at least
it's so in St. Marys. You're too big to get under a bushel basket.
Every one saw that you were dabbling in real estate for years, and made
a good clean up, but you seemed so darned ashamed of it that no one
cared to discuss it with you. And all the time you were our prize
package disbeliever. What's the use? It's your own affair, but why
don't you make a lightning change like the man in the circus last week?
Your friends would welcome