e. To-night I want to go up that cable and
call on Mr. Boldrick again, and see the mills and the electric light,
and hear your whistle, from up there. Then, of course, you must show us
the mill working at night, and afterwards--may I ask it?--you must all
come and have supper with me at the summer hotel."

Ruth dropped her eyes. I saw she did not wish to go. Fortunately
Mr. Devlin extricated her. "I'm afraid that will be impossible, Mrs.
Falchion," he said: "much obliged to you all the same. But I am going to
be at the mill pretty near all night, and shouldn't be able to go, and I
don't want Ruth to go without me."

"Then it must be another time," said Mrs. Falchion.

"Oh, whenever it's convenient for Ruth, after a day or two, I'll be
ready and glad. But I tell you what: if you want to see something fine,
you must go down as soon as possible to Sunburst. We live there, you
know, not here at Viking. It's funny, too, because, you see, there's a
feud between Viking and Sunburst--we are all river-men and mill-hands at
Viking, and they're all salmon-fishers and fruit-growers at Sunburst. By
rights I ought to live here, but when I started I thought I'd build
my mills at Sunburst, so I pitched my tent down there. My wife and the
girls got attached to the place, and though the mills were built at
Viking, and I made all my money up here, I live at Sunburst and spend
my shekels there. I guess if I didn't happen to live at Sunburst, people
would be trailing their coats and making Donnybrook fairs every other
day between these two towns. But that's neither here nor there. Take my
advice, Mrs. Falchion, and come to Sunburst and see the salmon-fishers
at work, both day and night. It is about the biggest thing in the way
of natural picturesqueness that you'll see--outside my mills. Indians,
half-breeds, white men, Chinamen--they are all at it in weirs and cages,
or in the nets, and spearing by torch-light!--Don't you think I would do
to run a circus, Mrs. Falchion?--Stand at the door, and shout: 'Here's
where you get the worth of your money'?"

Mrs. Falchion laughed. "I am sure you and I will be good friends; you
are amusing. And, to be perfectly frank with you, I am very weary of
trying to live in the intellectual altitudes of Dr. Marmion--and The
Padre."

I had never seen her in a greater strain of gaiety. It had almost a kind
of feverishness--as if she relished fully the position she held towards
Roscoe and Ruth, her power ove