eeling of anticipation.

It was noted in the store that when the murmur of voices, a mingling of
the stranger's penetrating tones and Filmer's fuller, richer note, had
lasted for a moment, the mayor got up and banged the door shut, after
which there drifted out only a suggestion of conversation. It was not
until an hour later that the door opened and the two came slowly out,
the stranger as brisk as ever. Filmer was pulling thoughtfully at his
glossy black whiskers. Both paused on the wide front step.

"Then at eight this evening, Mr. Clark?" said Filmer.

"At eight," answered the stranger, staring keenly at the river.

"Won't you come and stay with me while you are here, it's just as
comfortable as the hotel?" Filmer laughed softly.

Clark shook his head. "Thanks, I'll have too much to do while I am
here. I'd better be alone." And with that he set off walking smartly
up the long rambling street that led to the abandoned power canal.

He progressed steadily with quick energetic steps, an alert and
suggestive figure amidst a scene of placidity. Up the uneven plank
walk he went, noting with a swift, sidelong glance the neat white house
of Dibbott, the Indian agent, a house that thrust its snowy, wooden
walls and luxuriant little garden close up to the street. On his left,
still further west, was the home of Worden, the local magistrate. This
was a comfortable old place by the river, with a neglected field
between it and the highway. Scattered here and there were stores,
small buildings with high, wooden fronts, in the upper part of which
lived the proprietor and his family. On the right, street after street
started intermittently northward and died, houseless, at the railway
line, beyond which lay the unbroken bush. Still further up was the
County jail, set four square in a large lot that had been shorn of
trees. It was of gray stone, massive and forbidding and iron barred.
Clark stopped here for a moment and looked back at St. Marys with its
flaming maples and its scattered roofs from which rose plumes of light,
gray smoke. His eyes half closed as though in some sudden
introspection, till, turning abruptly, he struck off over a road that
led across a mile of level land and came presently to the grave of the
industrial hopes of the town. It was an ugly scar in the face of the
helpless earth.

Climbing the half completed embankment, he looked west, where through
the clearing he could see the waters o