Then, with sudden anger, "Is the job too big for you?"

He turned away abruptly, passing the whirling flywheel, the ponderous
cylinders, the glowing ovens, while above him the traveling crane moved
like a whining monster across the blackened roof. He hastened,
desirous of getting out of the presence of these giants whom he had
assembled only in order that they might deride him with their massive
proportions.

So on to the towering masses of the furnaces. Here he saw poured a
molten charge, and stood fascinated, as always, by the smooth and
deadly gleam of molten metal, till, curtly, the same orders were
issued. No further charges should be fed in before orders to that
effect. Then back to his office, where he cancelled shipments of coke,
and sent to the iron mine a curt word that stilled the boom of dynamite
and silenced the sharp chatter of the drills.

Gradually through the works spread the chilling news. A slowly
thickening stream of Swedes, Poles and Hungarians filed out of the big
gates, and Ironville was, in mid-afternoon, populated with a puzzled
multitude that repaired automatically to the saloons. Through pulp
mills and machine shops, through power and pumping stations, the story
went, growing as rapidly as it spread. Time keepers heard it and
office clerks, and the crews of tugs and steamships that lay at the big
dock below the works. And while rumors were widening every minute,
there was a knock at Clark's door and, looking up, he saw the
comptroller who stood quietly, with a check for the week's payroll in
his hand.

"How much?" The voice was admirably impersonal.

"One hundred and ten thousand." The comptroller was a short fat man,
and at the moment quivering with suppressed excitement.

The general manager scribbled his initials on the blue slip, handed it
back without a word, and did not even look up as the official went out.
A few minutes later he walked slowly through the pulp mill, stopping
here and there to speak to superintendents and workmen. The swishing
rasp of the great stones and the steady rumble of turbines brought him
a sense of comfort. He progressed deliberately, and with his usual
keen interest, so that, although hundreds of eyes followed him, not a
man could assume that anything had gone seriously wrong. It was an
hour in which he found and radiated confidence. Here, at least, was
the universal conclusion that all was as it should be. He was on the
bank of the power