Wolf and Catherine stood at the door with a word of cheer, a friendly nod, or a silent pressure of the hand for every one who emerged from the hall. These two alone at every turn grew in prestige among all jarring factions of the struggling colony. CHAPTER XXV THE MASTER HAND The whole machinery of the colony responded instantly to the grip of the master's hand. It was the one thing needed to insure successful progress. When the Brotherhood realized that the young poet-athlete was not merely a love-sick dreamer and theorist, but a man of quick decisions, of firm and inflexible will, and the power to execute his will, they fell in line, caught the step, and order emerged from chaos. When a crisis called for decision he made it with lightning rapidity and stuck to it. The situation demanded a dictatorship for the moment, and he did not hesitate to assume it. He saw before him sure success. If fools and cranks interfered with his plans he would crush and push them aside. The consciousness of power and its daily exercise developed his faculties to their highest tension. His mind began to arrange every detail of the vast and complicated system of the new social scheme. Men became the mere tools with which he would work out the revolution in human society. Every scrap of knowledge he had ever gained flashed through his excited imagination and fell into its place in the creation of the new order. He put the machine-shops to work constructing the big gold dredge on which he had experimented one summer. He had a pet scheme of farming which had come into his mind from watching his father's gardener the year before raise the most delicious cantaloups he had ever tasted. He discovered the secret of their marvellous sweetness and leaped to an instantaneous conclusion. He had the opportunity to test this inspiration now on a scale as vast as his dreams. He called the superintendents and overseers of the farm together, and asked their plans for the crop on the five hundred acres of fertile lands under cultivation. They gave him their schedule for a variety of crops. "Won't this soil grow cantaloups?" he asked. They all reported that it would. "Then I suggest that the entire acreage be planted in these vines." To a man they declared the plan absurd. "But suppose," he persisted, "that we raise and send to the East the most delicious melon they have ever tasted, and suppose we get three dollars a crate, we will make three hundred dollars an acre and our first crop will be worth one hundred and fifty thousand dollars." They laughed at him. "Do you know," smilingly inquired the superintendent, "how much it will cost to plant and harvest such a crop?" "I should say twenty-five dollars an acre," he replied. "Double it," he cried. "Very well, fifty dollars an acre," Norman agreed. "In round numbers it will cost us twenty-five thousand dollars. That leaves a profit of more than a hundred thousand, doesn't it?" Again the superintendent laughed.