.

His thought leapt back on the instant to the man who had sent him down
to this Sachigo. Father Adam, with his thin, ascetic features, his long,
dark hair and beard, his tall, spare figure. His patient kindliness and
sympathy, and yet with the will and force behind it which could fling
the muzzle of a gun into a man's face and force obedience. He had sent
him. Why? Because--oh, it was all absurd, unreal. And yet here he was on
the steamer; and there ahead lay the wonders of Sachigo. Well, time
would prove the craziness of it all.

"Makes you wonder, eh?" The coasting skipper was at his side again. "You
know these folks needed big nerve to set up this enterprise. It keeps me
guessing at the limits where man has to quit. I've spent my life on this
darn coast, an' never guessed to see the day when trolley cars 'ud run
on Labrador, and the working folk 'ud sit around in their dandy houses,
with electric light making things comfortable for them, and electric
heat takin' the place of the cordwood stove it seemed to me folk never
could do without. Can you beat it? No. You can't. Nor anyone else."

"Who is it? A corporation?" Bull asked, knowing full well the answer. He
wanted to hear, he wanted to learn all that this man could tell him.

Hardy shook his head.

"Standing," he said. "That was the guy's name who started it all up.
But," he added thoughtfully, "I never rightly knew which feller it was.
If it was Standing, or that tough hoboe feller who calls himself Bat
Harker. They never talk a heap. But since Leslie Standing passed out o'
things eight years back--the time I was first handed command of this
kettle--the mill's jumped out of all notion. Those trolleys," he pointed
at the foreshore of the cove: "They started in to haul the 'hands' to
their work only two years back. I'd say it's Bat Harker. But he looks
more like a longshore tough than a--genius."

He shrugged expressively. Then he shook his head.

"No," he went on. "I don't know a thing but what any guy can learn who
comes along up this coast. I've thought a heap. An', like you, I've ast
questions all the time. But you don't learn a thing of this enterprise
but the things you see. Bat Harker don't ever talk." He laughed in quiet
enjoyment. "He's most like a clam mussed up in a cement bar'l. There
don't seem any clear reason either. The only thing queer to me was
Standing's 'get out.' There was talk then when that happened along. But
it was jest talk. Cantee