a
small yacht to navigate himself when he's traveling on duty, and
weather won't stop him if he gets it. You'll see him next spring."

Clark seemed interested. "I don't know many parsons but that doesn't
describe them to me. A sportsman and a sense of humor, eh? It sounds
like a hunting parson. I thought they were all dead."

"This one isn't."

"St. Marys begins to offer more than I expected," smiled his chief.
"Are you going to bed, or will you sit here and freeze to death?"

Riggs, Stoughton, and Wimperley came up next day. Clark met them at
the station, where a bitter wind was droning down from the north, and
Belding, by engineering of a high order, made room for them at his
quarters. Then they drove out to the canal, and with Clark climbed the
icy embankment while the latter expounded the situation.

"There," he said cheerfully, "will be the first power house, and there
mill number one."

Riggs, a small thin-blooded man, peered at the glassy landscape.
"Splendid," he chattered, while Stoughton pulled his fur collar over
his ears and set his back to the wind.

"Up at the north end,--you can see it better if you step a little this
way--will be the head gates. That railway trestle--you see that
trestle don't you, Wimperley?--"

Wimperley pulled himself together, but his feet had lost all feeling.
"Yes, any one could see that."

"Well, that will be replaced by a steel bridge at the railway's
expense. We propose to widen the canal at that point to one hundred
feet at the bottom, and now--" here he seized the unfortunate Stoughton
and swung him so that he faced into the chilling blast--"I want to
point out the booming ground for logs."

Stoughton muttered something that sounded like strong condemnation of
all logs, but Clark did not seem to hear him.

"They'll come round that point, swing into the bay and feed down this
way to the mill. You get that, don't you?"

They all got it, at least so they earnestly assured the speaker who
stood with his overcoat half unbuttoned, his cap on the back of his
head and apparently oblivious of the temperature. This frigid and
desolate scene had no terrors for him. Beneath the icy skin he
discovered its promise.

"There'll be two booms--one for pulp wood and the other for hard wood
for the veneer mills. You make hard wood float by driving plugs of
lighter wood into both ends of the log. And now, if you'll step down
this way, I'll show you where the dredges