The color climbed into Semple's cheeks, and he went quickly out with his head up. Clark glanced after him and his lips twisted into a smile.
"I give him forty-eight hours. If it doesn't come by that—we'll ring down the curtain," he said to himself thoughtfully.
He went out and walked, for hours, through the deserted buildings. They were full of hollow mockery. Watchmen, posted by Belding at strategic points, glanced after him curiously. He seemed lonely and diminutive in this mechanical wilderness of his own creation. They wondered how a man felt in such a position as his at a time like this. He dared not go to the rapids, lest he read in their uproar some new and menacing note. He thought lingeringly of Elsie. She seemed far from this crisis, and at the same time curiously a part of it. Never did he feel more certain of the girl's affection than now, and it came to him what a refuge a woman's breast might be for a man in such case as himself. In the moment his forceful brain protested at the thought of refuge.
He tramped on with a slow wonder at the magnitude of his own activities. Here and there, individual buildings stimulated poignant memories of the occasion that brought them forth. The sulphur plant assumed an aspect of derision. Beneath the huge dimensions of the head-race he seemed to discern the obliterated canal over which St. Marys came to grief. Was he himself to be brought down by its titanic successor? He stared up the lake, comparing himself with the voyageur who had once floated out of this wide immensity to trade at St. Marys. He, too, had been trading at St. Marys. "Big magic!" old Shingwauk had said, when his dark eyes beheld the works. Was it, after all, barely possible they were nothing but magic?
XXIII.—CONCERNING THE RIOT
Next morning came a rap at his office door and Baudette entered, treading very lightly. Clark looked up and shook his head.
"I haven't got any money yet."
"I don't want any money."
The gray eyes softened a little. "You're the only man I've met who doesn't. What is it?"
Baudette pointed out of the window.