g table, turned--for Wimperley did not often laugh--and saw
Birch's long finger resting on the melon, and, since Marsham was,
without the knowledge of the others, one of the largest operators, in
Consolidated stock, that stock took a further jump just half an hour
later, and all through Pennsylvania there were farmers, mechanics,
country doctors and storekeepers who read the news and rejoiced
exceedingly thereat.

The others went their way, and Wimperley walked back to his office
immersed in profound contemplation. Feelings of personal injury were
mixed with those of apprehension. How would the affair proceed after
Clark had taken with him his unrivaled and intimate knowledge of the
works; for, and in spite of all the dictates of prudence, it seemed
impossible to think of the vast enterprise at St. Marys without its
central pivot.

X.--CUPIDITY VS. LOYALTY

And all this time the chief constable of St. Marys was speculating in
property with steadily increasing success. So crafty was he that few
people in the town knew it. When the fourth year of Clark's regime was
completed, Manson had made profits that astonished him. His purchases
covered both farm and town lands, and amongst the latter was a mortgage
on the vine clad cottage of Fisette. But not a man in his circle would
have guessed that what prompted the acquisition of the Fisette mortgage
was Manson's remembrance of a friendly joke about a Unitarian wolf; a
joke which still lived and set up a minute but unceasing irritation.
Now, at any time, Manson might be in a position to teach the bishop a
lesson.

It fell on a day that he was at the head of the old portage leading
round the rapids. Here he had recently acquired an option on a
considerable acreage, calculating that before long a new town would
spring up in the shadow of the works, and, just as he pushed through
the underbrush and came out on the gravel beach, he caught the flash of
a paddle a mile away. He was hot and breathless and, lighting his big
pipe, sat in the shade, his ruminative eye on the fast approaching
canoe. Twenty minutes later it touched the shore, and Fisette, leaning
forward on the thwarts, surveyed him with black and lustrous eyes.

Manson nodded. He did not speak at once. It was palpable that Fisette
had been prospecting, and always in the north country the returning
prospector brings with him a peculiar fascination. He is the herald of
the hitherto unknown. It was a