No, no, don't protest.
I don't mind what you think and you've a perfect right to your own
opinion. What did I say about land? Did I advise you to buy?"

"No, but you evidently wondered why we didn't."

Clark laughed outright. "I wonder at many things, that's my privilege,
and anything I said just now is in contradiction to your judgment. You
strike me as being a man of strong views, so by all means hold on to
them."

But Manson's eyes were turned fixedly on the main chance and he could
not look away. "Of course, I may be wrong," he began awkwardly, "but--"

"And, of course, I may be too, and now you'll excuse me, I've a good
deal to attend to."

Very slowly the chief constable took his way to town. Like many who
came in contact with Clark he had conceived the impression of a strong
and piercing intelligence that, while it gave out much, withheld more;
and it was what he imagined was withheld that now piqued and stimulated
the austerely masked project he had had in view ever since Clark's
directors had so breezily invaded his office months before. Manson
was, in truth, an example of those who, externally impassive and
unemotional, harbor at times a secret and consuming thought at variance
with all outward semblance, and, keeping this remotely hidden, feed it
with all the concentrated fire of an otherwise inactive imagination.
That afternoon he quietly secured an option on a portion of the fields
across which he walked so stolidly, and, with this as a beginning,
turned his thoughts to the acquisition of more and more land.
Simultaneously his expressed views on the outcome of Clark's activities
became more pessimistic than ever.

Early that summer the streets of St. Marys were torn with trenches and
the glass fronts of the wooden stores trembled with the vibration of
blasting. The pipe lines followed exactly the route laid out by the
blue prints Belding had long since deposited with the town council, and
so well known was this route that the slightest variation would have
been pounced upon instantly. Clark, it appeared, did not take much
interest in the work, but turned it over entirely to the engineer, his
own imagination having moved to other things.

New faces in the town ceased to create comment, and, what was more to
the point, mention of St. Marys began to appear in metropolitan papers.
These were read with the peculiar thoroughness of those who, for the
first time, found themselves of definite inter