sia and the settlement of the great
North--and how great is that North--etc., etc.

During the following days Dave had a keener eye than usual for
evidences of 'industrial development.' He found them on every hand.
Old properties, long considered unsalable, were changing owners.
Handsomely furnished offices had been opened on principal corners for
the sale of city and country property. Hotels were crowded, bar-rooms
were jammed. The preponderance of the male population had never been
so pronounced, and every incoming train added to it. Money moved
easily; wages were stiffening; tradesmen were in demand. There was
material for many good stories in his investigations. He began writing
features on the city's prosperity and prospects. The rival paper did
the same, and there was soon started between them a competition of
optimism. The great word became "boost." It stood, apparently, for
any action or attitude that would increase prices. The virus was now
in the veins of the community; pulsing through every street and by-way
of the little city. Dave marvelled, and wondered how he had failed to
read these signs until Conward had laid their portent bare before him.
But as yet it was only his news sense that responded; his delight in
the strange and the sensational. He was not yet inoculated with the
poison of easy wealth.

His nights were busy with his investigations, but on Sundays, as usual,
he went out to Duncans'. He had developed the habit of attending
morning service; he loved the music, and it was customary for Edith to
sing a morning solo. Her voice, which had enraptured him when they
first met, had developed wonderfully. It filled the morning air like
the clear tolling of silver bells. For its sake he gladly endured the
sermons, and even in the sermon he sometimes found common ground with
the preacher. They could meet on any faith that postulated the
brotherhood of man. But the reverend speaker touched such a subject
warily. It seemed to Dave he would gladly have gone further, but was
held in restraint by a sense of the orthodoxy of his congregation. Too
literal an interpretation of the brotherhood of man might carry the
taint of Socialism, and the congregation represented the wealth of the
city. It was safer to preach learnedly on abstractions of belief.

This morning Edith had not been in her place, and the service was flat.
In the afternoon she was not at her home. Mrs. Duncan explained that