* * * * *

The dynamos were revolving at terrific speed.  There were some eighteen in all, and their dull roar was racking upon ears unused.  Bat was regarding them without enthusiasm.  All he knew was the thing they represented.  Skert Lawton had told him.  They represented the harnessing of five hundred thousand horse power of the Beaver River water.  The engineer had assured him, in his unsmiling fashion, that he had secured enough power to supply the whole Province of Quebec with electricity.  All of which, in Bat’s estimation, seemed to be an unnecessary feat.

Bull was gazing in frank wonder on the engineer’s completed work.  It was his first sight of it.  The place had been long in building.  But the sight of it in full running, the sense of enormous power, the thought and labour this new power-house represented, filled him with nothing but admiration for the author of it all.

Bat hailed one of the electricians serving the machines.

“Where’s Mr. Lawton?” he shouted.

“He went out.  He ain’t here,” the man shouted back.

Bat regarded the man for a moment without favour.  Then he turned away.  He beckoned Bull to follow, and moved over to the sound-proof door which shut off the engineer’s office.  They passed to the quiet beyond it.

It was quite a small room without any elaborate pretensions.  There was a desk supporting a drawing board, with a chair set before it.  There was also a rocker-chair which accommodated the lean body of Skert Lawton at such infrequent moments as it desired repose.  Beyond that there was little enough furniture.  The place was mainly bare boards and bare walls.  Bat sat himself at the desk and left Bull the rocker-chair.

“I’d fixed it so Skert was to meet us here,” he said.  “All this is his stuff.  I couldn’t tell you an’ amp from a buck louse.”

Bull nodded.

“That’s all right,” he said.  “Maybe he’s held up down at the mill.  He’ll get—­”

“Held up—­nuthin’!”

The lumberman was angry.  But his anger was not at the failure of his arrangements.  Back of his head he was wondering at the thing that claimed the engineer.  He felt that only real urgency would have kept him from his appointment.  And he knew that urgency just now had a more or less ugly meaning.

“Lawton’s a pretty bright boy—­” Bull began.  But the other caught him up roughly.

“Bright?  That don’t say a thing,” Bat cried.  “Guess he’s a whole darn engineering college rolled into the worst shape of the ghost of a man it’s been my misfortune ever to locate.  He’s a highbrow of an elegant natur’.  He calls this thing ‘co-ordination,’ which is another way of sayin’ he’s beat nigh a hundred thousand dollars out of our bank roll to hand us more power than we could use if we took in Broadway, New York, at night.  But it’s elegant plannin’ and looks good to me.  Your folks over the water’ll maybe see things in