Fisette backed silently out, his dark brow pinched into puzzled wrinkles. He had expected his patron to take the samples and stare at them and then at him with that wonderful look he remembered so well and could never forget; a look that had made the breed feel strangely proud and happy. He had often seen it since when, quite alone in the woods, he peered through the gray smoke of his camp fire and imagined his patron sitting just on the other side. And now he was to go into St. Marys and do nothing but talk! He shook his head doubtfully.
No sooner had the door closed than Clark summoned the superintendent of his railway department.
"Fisette has found gold out near the line. There's going to be a rush, and you'd better get ready for it. Also you'd better run up some kind of an hotel at Mile 61,--it's the jumping off place. That's all--please send Pender here."
A moment later he turned to his secretary.
"Fisette is waiting outside. Talk to him, he's found gold. Get the story and give it to the local paper. Say that I've no objection to prospectors working on our concession, and that I'll guarantee title to anything they find. Get in touch with the Toronto papers and let them have it too. That's all."
The door closed again and, with a strange feeling of restlessness, he walked over to the rapids, seating himself close to their thundering tumult. What message had the rapids for him now? And just as the voice of irresistible power began to bore into his brain he noticed a girl perched on a rock close by. Simultaneously she turned. It was Elsie Worden.
She waved a hand, and he moved carefully up stream over the slippery boulders. She looked at him with startled pleasure. It was unlike Clark to move near to any one.
"No," his voice came clearly through the roar of many waters; "do you often come here?"
She smiled. "It's the most conversational place I know."
The gray eyes narrowed a little. "You have discovered that the rapids talk back?"
"They have told me all kinds of things ever since I was a child. When did you find it out?" Elsie's voice lifted a little.
"The very first day I reached St. Marys, almost the first hour." He was wondering inwardly why he should talk thus to any one.