Belding got up in swift discomfort. "It looks as if you did." Her lips curved into a smile. "Don't go yet. Doesn't it seem as though all this were meant to be from the beginning, and isn't Mr. Clark in the grip of something bigger than himself?" "It's pretty big if he is." "I know, but isn't he a prophet in the wilderness, the wilderness of Algoma, and he hasn't much honor except what a few of us give him?" Belding looked at her strangely. This was a new Elsie, who seemed wistful--yet not for him. Her eyes were cloudy with thought and he had a curious sensation that he was at this moment far from her imagination. She turned to him. "Take me out in your canoe, now." He felt suddenly and inexpressibly happy. "Come along." She leaned back against the cushions while Belding dipped a practiced blade in the unruffled stream. The night was clear and the sky studded with innumerable stars. "Where to?" he said contentedly. She waved a slim hand towards the rapids. "As near as you can, then round into the big bay." He put his back into his work and the canoe shot forward, reaching presently those long foam-flecked swells that mark the foot of the turmoil. In ten minutes they were in the heel of the rapids and as far as Belding dared go with so precious a burden. Elsie felt the cold spray on her face and her eyes shone with delight. After a little she pointed northward and the canoe edged into the big bay that stretched below, the works. The bulk of the pulp mill loomed darkly into the quiet air, and further up they could hear the rattle of machine drills hammering into the great sandstone ledges. Passing the pigmy lock of the old Hudson Bay Company, they floated a hundred yards from shore and immediately opposite the blockhouse. Here Elsie lifted her hand, and Belding, with a queer feeling of resentment, backed water. The upper part of the house was softly lighted and the windows were open. Its gabled roof seemed diminutive compared to the structures which were taking shape close by and, as they looked, there drifted out the sound of a piano. Clark himself was invisible, but his finger tips were talking to the glistening keys. Elsie listened breathlessly. This was the man within the man who now sat plunged in profound meditation. Presently the music ceased and Clark's figure appeared at the window. He was staring at the rapids, and it seemed that as he stared he set up some mysterious communication that linked his own force and determination with their irresistible sweep. On the way back Elsie was very silent and it came upon Belding with dull insistency that whatever attraction he had hoped to have for the girl had been merged in the fact that, for the present at any rate, he was nothing more than a means of satisfying her sudden and, to him, fantastical interest in the man under whose dominant bidding the color of so many lives was being modified and blended. VIII.--IRON