cken down by illness,
Larssen allowed him a liberal pension.

That was "business" as the shipowner viewed it in his broad, far-sighted
way. He saw business not as the mere handling of goods, but as the
handling of _men_. In the attainment of his ambitions he was dependent
on faithful service from his employees, and accordingly he made it worth
their while to be faithful. He was liberal to them because liberality
paid him. His position in the world was somewhat like that of a robber
baron in the Middle Ages, carving out a kingdom with the help of loyal
followers. The people he plundered were the outsiders, and a certain
share of the spoils went to his men.

So Dean knew that if he carried out thoroughly the work entrusted to
him, Larssen would stand by his spoken promise. He resolved to obey
orders as faithfully and as intelligently as he possibly could. He did
not write home what form his new work was taking. In his letters to
Daisy he explained simply that he was being sent to Canada on a
confidential mission, at a big increase of salary, and that he was
having a regal time of it. At Quebec and Montreal and Ottawa and
Winnipeg he scoured the shops to find presents which would carry to her
a realisation of his new position.

Dean began to feel his importance growing rapidly as he journeyed across
the Atlantic and around the principal cities of Canada. He thought he
realised the meaning of "business" as it was viewed by the men up above,
the men at the roll-top desks. He saw now that it was not hard, plugging
work that earned them their big salaries. In a short fortnight he had
begun to look a little contemptuously on the grinders and plodders. Why
couldn't they realise how little their patient, plodding service could
ever bring them? But some men, he reflected, were born to be merely
clerks all their days. He was different--out of the common ruck. He
could see largely, like Lars Larssen did. He was a man of importance.

Canada pressed a broad thumb on his plastic mind without his conscious
knowledge. Canada with her young, red-blooded vigour swept into him like
a tidal wave of open sea into a sluggish, marshy creek. Canada thrust
her vastness and her limitless potentialities at him with a careless
hand, as though to say: "Here's opportunity for the taking." Canada
taught him in ten days what at home he would never have learnt in a
lifetime: that London is not the British Empire.

The clerk who lives out his life in