f such
incredible labour. Suddenly a column of fire, deep orange at the core,
raying through paler yellow to a palpitating white brilliancy, shot up
through the torn vapours, the massed and shuddering smoke, to the
clouds, and was sharply withdrawn in a coppery smother pierced by a
rapid, lance-like thrust of steel-blue flame.

These stupendous miles were, to-day, the furnaces and forges that
Gilbert Penny had built and operated in the pastoral clearings of the
Province. Howat recalled the single, diminutive shed of Myrtle Forge,
the slender stream, the wheel, its sole power; the solitary stack of
Shadrach Furnace, recreated in his vision, opposed its insignificant
bulk against the living greenery of overwhelming forests. Now the
forests were gone, obliterated by the mills that had grown out of
Gilbert's energy and determination, his pioneer courage. His spirit, the
indomitable will of a handful of men, a small, isolated colony, had
swept forward in a resistless tide, multiplying invention, improvement,
with success until, as Howat had seen, their flares reached to the
clouds, their industry spread in iron cities. James Polder had a part in
this. Here, under the ringing walls of the steel mills, he got a fresh
comprehension of the bitter, restless virility of the younger man.

Out of the station Mariana furnished the driver of a public motor with
James Polder's address, and they twisted through congested streets, past
the domed Capitol, rising from intense green sod, flanked by involved
groups of sculpture, to a quieter reach lying parallel with the river.
They discovered Polder's house occupying a corner, one of a short row of
yellow brick with a scrap of lawn bound by a low wall, and a porch
continuous across the face of the dwellings.

The door opened after a long interval, and a woman with bare arms and a
spotted kitchen apron admitted them to an interior faintly permeated
with the odours of cooking. There were redly varnished chairs, upright
piano, a heavily framed saccharine print of loves and a flushed,
sleeping divinity; a table scarred by burning cigarettes, holding cerise
knitting on needles one of which was broken, glasses with dregs of beer,
a photograph in a tarnished silver frame of Harriet de Barry Polder
with undraped shoulders and an exploited dimple, and a copy of a
technical journal. A fretful, shrill barking rose at their heels; and
Howat Penny swung his stick at a diminutive, silky white dog with