y. He did not
think of this but had merely set a determined face toward his guiding
star. The vision was still clear and sharp when he reached
Philadelphia, reinspired by a series of swift calculations that were as
swiftly stowed away for suitable use in his retentive brain. There
were also three names--Wimperley, Riggs, and Stoughton.

The morning after he arrived he went to see the first of his prospects.
Wimperley was the auditor of a great railway system, and when Clark's
name was brought in he looked up from his desk and announced shortly:
"Busy, can't see him," which was really what Clark expected.

Now the influence by which Clark forced and carried out this interview
with Wimperley need not be succinctly described, nor the half amused,
half resentful surrender with which Wimperley finally said, "Show him
in," but it is indicative of that power of hypnosis which Clark could
exert at will, and by means of which, time and time again, he dissolved
antagonism into support and the murky solution of criticism into the
clean precipitate of confident reassurance. Wimperley knew perfectly
well that, once admitted, Clark would convert him to his own present
belief, whatever that might be, and that under Clark's magnetic
persuasion he would shortly find himself treading a totally unexpected
path.

"Good morning. I'd like to have fifteen minutes." Clark was inwardly
amused, but he spoke with perfect gravity.

Wimperley drew a long breath. He knew what could happen in fifteen
minutes. "What's the scheme now?"

"Power and pulp," said Clark briefly, and, turning to a large railway
map on the wall laid a finger on the point where Lake Superior falls
into Lake Huron.

"Go ahead."

"I have acquired the right to develop any desired quantity of energy.
This can be done for eighty dollars a horsepower. The country to the
north is full of pulp wood, but the people up there don't know it."

Wimperley felt a throb of interest. The power question in Philadelphia
was up at the moment, but it was power developed from coal and it came
high.

"What else?" he said evenly, "and how do you know it?"

"Seven different lumbermen have offered to contract for ten thousand
cords a year. That's all I had time to talk to. The point is that
each has individual knowledge of good stands of timber in his own
locality but the thing has never been collated. Now look here," went
on Clark, with a new light in his gray eyes--"there's