Manson went stolidly back to his square stone office, where he took out his broker's statement for the previous month and stared at it silently. Already he knew the figures by heart. Another two point rise in Consolidated stock and he would realize his net profit of one hundred thousand dollars. He ran over his own scribbled figures on the back of the statement, as he had gone over them many times before. They were quite right. For weeks past his selling order had been in, been acknowledged, and now at any moment the thing might be done. It might even have already been done. The blood rushed to his head at the thought. How many other chief constables, he wondered, had amassed fortunes from behind their forbidding gray stone walls? Then he thought of his wife and children, and his eyes softened, while the broker's statement in his big hand trembled ever so slightly. He smiled at that, and it came to his mind that perhaps statements in other men's hands sometimes trembled at the thought of their wives and children and the fortunes that--and here Manson felt vaguely uncomfortable and, getting up, slowly locked his desk. Just at that moment, Filmer, who had returned to his office, was sitting staring at a half-section of steel rail that lay in his hand. It was smooth and highly polished, a thin slice of the very first product of Clark's last and greatest undertaking. He experienced a quite extraordinary sensation at feeling the thing, and it snatched his mind back seven years till again in the Town Hall he heard a magnetic voice assuring the citizens that the town lacked just three essentials--experience, money and imagination, and that the speaker would supply them all. It was a far cry from that evening to the deep drone of the rail mill, and Filmer, detaching himself from the picture in which he formed a part, began now to perceive its dramatic vitality. Were Clark taken out the whole thing seemed to fall to pieces. And up at the See House, the bishop was examining just such another section of rail, while the gold of his episcopal ring shone beside the gray of steel. To him it meant many things, but chiefly it was prophetic of that which would soon put an end to the detachment and loneliness of the scattered communities to which he ministered. Holding the thing thus, his heart went out to Clark, and he yearned with a great longing over the spirit of this man who so reveled in the joy of creation. His eyes wandered to the Evangeline. She lay at anchor just off shore. A thin film of smoke slid from her funnel, and he could see the Indian pilot swabbing down her smooth teak decks. Then, in sudden impulse, he smiled and, laying the rail section on top of a half finished sermon, wrote a short note, and, calling his man servant, instructed him to wait for an answer.