“I’ve bought the Allans’ ranch in the Foothills,” said Lane. “They were in such a hurry to sell that they don’t know to a few thousand how many head are on the property, but I do. The outfit’s worth half a million more than they asked me for it. I only just found out why they were so darned anxious to sell. They’ve gone into the Merchants’ Bank and the Ogilvie Milling Company, and want ready money. I don’t carry half a million in my jeans, but I know where to get it. I had to tell somebody the d---- news, and you’re the first friend I saw in the hotel.” One all-in-the-day episode from Shaw, and we must leave him to his golf. In the spring of 1883 he was sent to Port Arthur to receive the first steamer load of passengers that was to enter Winnipeg direct from an Ontario port. The boat was the City of Owen Sound, from Owen Sound, which the C.P.R. had made its Lake Huron terminus, failing to arrange for Collingwood. There was practically no landing accommodation--the hour for porters on Thunder Bay had not yet struck. Three hundred and fifty passengers disembarked and their baggage was handled by the C.P.R. officers, of whom Shaw was one. Among them was a young engineer who, from having been a chainman on the Credit Valley line was on the way to a job on the Superior section of the C.P.R. His name was MacLeod. He was to become chief engineer and general manager of the Canadian Northern Railway, and build more miles of railway in the prairie country than any other man. CHAPTER XI. _Indicating several considerations which made Toronto the centre of a Transcontinental system._ A rather cynical friend used to say his title to respectability was that he was permitted to live in Toronto. For twenty-one years I have been enabled to read that title clear. In truth, Toronto is a goodly city, which doesn’t think of itself more highly than it ought to think, although it has a contrariwise repute. Occasionally one is inclined to observe that it might have thought a little more generously of some who have served it better than has always been recognized--Sir William Mackenzie and Sir Donald Mann, for examples.