"Thanks." Brewster laughed. "That's due to the man we're talking about."
"And supposing," put in Thorpe thoughtfully, "supposing the whole thing were to go smash! What would you say?"
The other man's eyes rounded a little. "I'd say," he answered slowly, "that even in that case the entire district would be in Clark's debt."
"Yes?"
"Because they know what's in the country now and how to get it out—and they never knew that before."
"And the immediate future—what do you see that depends on?"
"Steel rails," said Brewster with conviction. "Will you come up?"
Thorpe did go up, and Clark, who knew that Brewster had been in Toronto and conceived why, met them both at the works with a genuine welcome. He felt, nevertheless, that his undertakings were to be analyzed with cold deliberation.
At the end of two days Thorpe had seen them all—had peered into the gray black bowels of the iron mine, watched Baudette denuding the slopes of a multitude of hills—seen the stamps in the gold mill hammering out the precious particles that were caught by great quicksilver plates,—seen booms and train loads of pulp on their way to St. Marys—seen the white spruce shaven of its brown bark and ground and sheeted and loaded into the gaping holds of Clark's steamships—seen the blast furnaces vomit their molten metal—seen the rhythmic pumps and dynamos send water and light through every artery of the young city—seen the veneer mills ripping out flexible miles of their satiny wood—seen the power house on the American side making carbide to the low rumble of thousands of horsepower, and seen the electric railway that linked Ironville with St. Marys. And all the time Clark had put forward neither arguments in his own favor nor any request for credit, but only allowed these things to speak for themselves, till, as the aggregate became more and more rounded and the picture more complete, Thorpe perceived that here was something which initiated by an extraordinary brain had now grown to such vast proportions that it supplied its own momentum, and must of necessity move on to its appointed and final result.
But Clark did not distinguish in either Thorpe or Brewster any determining factor of his future. They would do what they were meant to do, and play the game as the master of the game decided. They might modify, but they would never create. His mind was pitched so far ahead that it was beside the mark to attempt to influence men who, he conceived, were not themselves endowed with any prophetic vision. He had to deal with them and he dealt with them, and though he wondered mutely at their abiding sense of the present and their apparent lack of faith in the inevitable future, he descended from the heights of his own imagination and parleyed in the bald and merciless language of strictly commercial affairs.