mills since then; it had caught fire
one wintry night and burned to the ground, and the Gershom paper-mill
had been built on the site.

Jacob had not come down in his ideas as to the value he set upon it, but
he had been content to take shares in the building instead of the "cash
down" which he had demanded before. In this way, and in other ways, he
came by and by to be the largest shareholder in the concern, and when
later, partly through the inefficiency of the person who had charge of
the business, and partly for other reasons, paper-making began to look
like a losing concern, the value of the shares went down, and in course
of time most of them fell into his hands. So it was "Holt's Paper-mill"
now, and there was no other manufacturing company as yet in existence in
Gershom. The chances were, it was said, that had the first company
succeeded with the woollen-mill it might have fallen into the same
hands, and as far as the general property of the town was concerned, it
might as well have been Jacob Holt's hands as others'. But those who
had lost, or who fancied they had lost, by his part in these two
transactions, were watchful and suspicious of his movements when once
more the wise men of Gershom began to see visions of what might be done
by the combined powers of the Beaver River, the enterprise of the
people, and the use of a moderate amount of capital to advance the
prosperity of their town.

Their ideas had still advanced with the times. Their plans were not
limited to a woollen-mill now. Machine shops of all sorts, a match
factory, furniture-shops, even a cotton factory was spoken of. Indeed,
there were no limits to the manufacturing possibilities of the place, as
far as talk went. Money was needed, and a good deal of it, and the
people of Gershom wisely contemplated the propriety of making use of
other people's money in building up the town, and for this purpose it
was desirable that the company should embrace the rich men of other
towns as well. Some of those rich men came in an informal way and
looked about, and admired the Beaver River, and talked and thought a
good deal about the scheme. The banks of the river above and below the
town were examined with a view to deciding on the building of a new dam,
and Mr Fleming's refusal to sell any part of his land had been in
answer to Jacob Holt's offer on behalf of the prospective company.

All this had taken place about the time when Mr Maxwell came