. That's two
rises you got out of me," he remarked. "Say, Orde, don't get persuaded
to turn ranger. I hear they've boosted their salaries to ninety a month.
Must be a temptation!"

[Footnote A: Extraordinary as it may seem to the modern reader, this
sentiment--or this ignorance--was at that time sincerely entertained by
men as influential, as powerful, and as closely interested in water
power as Baker is here depicted.]

VI

Bob arose rather early the following Sunday, snatched a hasty breakfast
and departed. Baker had been in camp three days. All at once Bob had
taken the young man in strong distaste. Baker amused him, commanded his
admiration for undoubted executive ability and a force of character so
dynamic as to be almost brutal. In a more social environment Bob would
still have found him a mighty pleasant fellow, generous, open-hearted,
and loyal to his personal friends. But just now his methods chafed on
the sensitiveness of Bob's new unrest. Baker was worth probably a couple
of million dollars, and controlled ten times that. He had now a fine
house in Fremont, where he had chosen to live, a pretty wife, two
attractive children and a wide circle of friends. Life was very good to
him.

And yet, in the perversity and the clairvoyance of his mood, Bob thought
to see in Baker's life something of that same emptiness of final
achievement he faced in his own. This was absurd, but the feeling of it
persisted. Thorne, with his miserable eighteen hundred a year, and his
glowing enthusiasm and quick interest seemed to him more worth while.
Why? It was absurd; but this feeling, too, persisted.

Bob was a healthy young fellow, a man of action rather than of
introspection, but now the hereditary twist of his character drove him
to attempt analysis. He arrived at nothing. Both Baker and Thorne seemed
to stand on one ground--each was satisfied, neither felt that lack of
the fulfilling content Bob was so keenly experiencing. But the streak of
feminine divination Bob had inherited from his mother made him
understand--or made him think to understand--that Baker's satisfaction
was taken because he did not see, while Thorne was working with his eyes
open and a full sense of values. This vague glimpse Bob gained only
partially and at length. It rather opened to him new vistas of spiritual
perplexity than offered to him any solution.

He paced rapidly down the length of the lake--whereon the battered but
efficient tow