nd she drew a deep breath as
she looked down into the thundering gorge realizing it was a great
fight he had won. Human courage and dogged endurance, inspired by him,
had mocked at the might of the river, and, blasting a new pathway for
it through the adamantine heart of the hills, would roll back the
barren waters from a good land that the stout of heart and arm might
enter in. Swamps would give place to wheat fields, orchards blossom
where willow swale had been, herds of cattle fatten on the levels of
the lake, and the smoke of prosperous homesteads drift across dark
forests where, for centuries, the wolf and deer had roamed undisturbed.
That was one aspect only, but she knew the man who loved her had won a
greater triumph over his own nature and others' passions and
infirmities.

It was with a thrill of pride that the girl realized all that he had
done for her, and yet for a few seconds she almost shrank from the
responsibility as high above the waiting men the stood with slender
fingers tightening upon the key. The issues of what must follow its
turning would be momentous, for it flashed upon her that the tiny
combination of copper and silver might, with equal chance, open the way
to a golden future or let in overwhelming disaster upon all she loved.
Then the doubt appeared an injustice to Geoffrey Thurston and those who
had followed him through frost and flood and whirling snow, and, with a
color on her forehead, and a light in her eyes, she pressed home the
key.

Then there was bustle and hurry. Julius Savine raised his hand, and
Tom from Mattawa whirled high the unfurled flag. Somebody beat upon an
iron sheet invisible below and the strip of beach in the depths of the
canyon became alive with running men. Next followed a deep stillness
intensified by the clamor of the river which would never raise the same
wild harmonies again, for the slender hand of a woman had bound it fast
henceforward under man's dominion. The hush was ended suddenly. For a
second the great hollow seemed filled with tongues of flame; then,
while thick smoke quenched them and crag and boulder crumbled to
fragments, a stunning detonation rang from rock to rock and rolled
upwards into the frozen silence of untrodden hills. Huge masses which
eddied and whirled, filling the gorge with the crash of their descent
leaped out of the vapor; there was a ceaseless shock and patter of
smaller fragments, and then, while long reverberations roll