"There is one thing we did not discuss," he said a little awkwardly.
"What's that?"
"What are you willing to give me a month. I'm apparently engaged and
I'd like to know where I stand."
Clark laughed shortly. "My invariable practice is to pay every cent my employees can earn; the more I pay the better I like it. Good evening."
Later that afternoon the engineer walked thoughtfully up to the power canal. It seemed incredible that it should no longer be abandoned. Staring at this uncompleted effort, he felt infused with a hot and overwhelming loyalty. Whatever was good in him he would put into the work. He did not dream of the magnitude of his coming trust, but had a sensation that the curtain was about to rise on a new scene. He was, perhaps, more than the rest impressed with the visitor's force and hypnotic power which seemed prophetic and almost mystical. Then his glance, wandering down stream, caught a trace of smoke where the afternoon steamer was disappearing round a bend.
Clark had gone off by the afternoon boat, explaining to Filmer that he desired to get a glimpse of some other parts of the country. Now he sat immovably in a corner of the deck, wrapped in a thick overcoat and speaking to none. In his hand was a copy of the town agreement. He ran over it musingly till he came to the clause which set forth his new obligations, and at this point his lips tightened a little. Had he at that moment been able to realize every worldly possession he had he might have cleared up twenty-five hundred dollars but certainly not five thousand. A glint came into his eyes as he read. The agreement set forth in Bowers' best phraseology that Robert Fisher Clark of Philadelphia, financier,—and at the sound of the last word Clark smiled a little,—hereby undertook to spend in various works not less than three million dollars in the next five years, failing which his title to the town's former holdings would automatically lapse.
The vessel moved smoothly on. Reviewing the last few days with perfect placidity, he sent his mind back to other notable occasions when success had been snatched from him, it seemed, at the very last moment. The review did not depress him. He was not of that kind, but was filled rather with a new and inflexible determination.
The dream and the vision broadened. As the vessel swung into the long turn that leads round the first big bend, he glanced back and caught the wide white line of foam below the spidery bridge. As he gazed the wooded ground to the north of the rapids seemed to be covered with great stone buildings whose walls lifted like mystic battlements in the green wilderness. He saw railways plunging into the forest and heard the rumble of trains that drew up to his phantom factories. He saw the river and the lakes furrowed with ships that came to St. Marys with foreign cargoes and, charged full with his products, turned their slim bows to distant lands. All this and much more passed in royal procession before his thoughtful eye. Then something seemed to leap through his brain and he stood erect, masterful and undaunted.
"And now," he said to himself with a touch of grim humor, "now perhaps
I'd better find some money."