Rod sometimes paused after dark in some distant part of the city to look at the flamboyant sign with a speculative interest, without the old resentment, but with a shade of disapproval. Grove was become a big man--Rod couldn't escape that conclusion--a big man in his chosen field. Scarcely a day but some newspaper quoted him. He figured in local print co-equal with the Peace Conference and the latest authentic report of Lenine's death. Nearly nine years now of waxing great in the financial firmament. Grove bade fair to win greater fame and fortune than that old forebear of his who beat around the Horn to found a family in the wilderness because the land filled his eyes with pleasure and his soul with peace. Would old Roderick have found pleasure and profit in discounting notes, clipping coupons at so much per cent, buying and selling bonds and mortgages, squeezing little debtors and bolstering up big ones for a consideration? Rod smiled at the quaint notion. But he had evidently underestimated Grove's capacity. Grove had his community behind him. His finger was in every pie. His skill at extracting plums was envied and admired. "He's what they mean when they talk about the greatness of our country," Rod thought cynically. "That sort of thing." Oliver Thorn had sold his timber to the Norquay Estate and retired to live in a cottage on the Capilano slope fronting on the city, where he could, as he told Rod, spend his last years seeing the sun rise from behind the Coast range and set behind the far, blue rampart of Vancouver Island. John P. Wall, Grove's father-in-law, had made a fortune in building wooden ships and another in airplane spruce. Wall's youngest son had been killed overseas, but his eldest had been too precious an asset to the community to risk his life in war. Isabel was a beauty, still unmarried. (It seemed to Rod an astonishing thing when Mary told him Isabel was her dearest friend.) The Deanes and Richstons flourished, with one or two gaps in the younger ranks. They had grown richer with the war, vastly more sure of themselves, setting a pace in the social parade that lesser folk found hard to follow.