hem only by some very definite achievement
he was able to hang round their necks like a label.

Belding saw to it that his own offices were guarded and walked to the
head of the rapids. He felt numbed. If Clark had conceived the works,
he himself had built them, and, as they grew under his hand, he felt
that something of his own existence went forth with every stroke of a
drill, and that a fragment of his brain lay in every course of masonry.
Like all true engineers, he delighted in the physical expression of his
ability, and here had been such an opportunity as few engineers ever
realized. He felt not so much dejected as dumbfounded that so much
skill and labor could be brought to a full stop just as it reached its
permanent stride. In his eyes the figure of Clark had long achieved
titanic proportions. Innumerable things had been demonstrated to be
possible, and to be chief engineer of such an enterprise had been,
thought Belding, all that any man could ask. It was true that in the
fatigue of work he had often imagined that Clark was going too fast,
but always the thing had been done. Now it seemed the ironical jest of
the gods that a shade too much carbon in a steel rail should wreck the
whole endeavor.

And there was Elsie. He had never been able to give her up. Against
the glamour of his chief's personality he had nothing to put forward
except a whole souled worship, and Elsie, it appeared, preferred the
invitation of the older man's romantic career. Subconsciously, Belding
decided that the thing was wrong and against nature, for he was marked
by a certain simple belief in the general fairness of life. He clung
to the doctrine of compensation, and held himself trustingly open to
whatever good influences might reach him. Elsie was the highest
influence of all. In Clark he had found a stimulus that nerved his
brain to great accomplishments. But Elsie and Clark had together
wounded his very spirit.

Clark, in the quiet of his private office, was thinking not of Belding
or Elsie, but of the mob that had trailed so uncertainly out of the big
gates. He had played for time and he had won--but that was all.
Sooner or later, driven by the impossibility of living without pay, the
mob would return, and in a less placable mood. He turned to the
telephone. "I want Mr. Filmer." In a moment he was speaking to the
mayor.

"What happened up here to-day is but a taste of what's coming. You'd
better get out the