"And if I should?" interrupted Philip, looking steadily at him. "What
if I should say there is a girl--a woman--in this trap--not only one,
but a score, a hundred of them? What then, Greggy?"

"I'd say there was going to be a glorious scrap."

"And so there is, the biggest and most unusual scrap of its kind you
ever heard of, Greggy. It's going to be a queer kind of fight--and
queer fighting. And it's possible--very probable--that you and I will
get lost in the shuffle somewhere. We're two, no more. And we're going
up against forces which would make a dozen South American revolutions
look like thirty cents. More than that, it's likely we'll be in the
wrong locality when certain people rise in a wrath which a Helen of
Troy aroused in another people some centuries ago. See here--"

He turned the map to Gregson, pointing with his finger.

"See that red line? That's the new railroad to Hudson's Bay. It is well
above Le Pas now, and its builders plan to complete it by next spring.
It is the most wonderful piece of railroad building on the American
continent, Greggy--wonderful because it has been neglected so long.
Something like a hundred million people have been asleep to its
enormous value, and they're just waking up now. That road, cutting
across four hundred miles of wilderness, is opening up a country half
as big as the United States, in which more mineral wealth will be dug
during the next fifty years than will ever be taken from Yukon or
Alaska. It is shortening the route from Montreal, Duluth, Chicago, and
the Middle West to Liverpool and other European ports by a thousand
miles. It means the making of a navigable sea out of Hudson's Bay,
cities on its shores, and great steel-foundries close to the Arctic
Circle--where there is coal and iron enough to supply the world for
hundreds of years. That's only a small part of what this road means,
Greggy. Two years ago--you remember I asked you to join me in the
adventure--I came up seeking opportunity. I didn't dream then--"

Whittemore paused, and a flash of his old smile passed over his face.

"I didn't dream that fate had decreed me to stir up what I'm going to
tell you about, Greggy. I followed the line of the proposed railroad,
looking for chances. All Canada was asleep, or too much interested in
its west, and gave me no competition. I was alone west of the surveyed
line; east of it steel-corporation men had optioned mountains of iron
and another interest had a gr