“When your boy’s born, what then?”

“Ah!”

Bat’s fists clenched at the sound of the other’s ejaculation.  It was the nervous clenching at a sound that threatened danger.  Swift as a shot he followed up his challenge.

“Your pore gal’s down there in Quebec hopin’ and prayin’ to hand you that boy child you reckon Providence is going to send you.  Well, when he gets along, and Hellbeam’s around—­and—­”

Bat broke off.  Standing had risen from his chair.  He had moved swiftly, his lean figure propelled towards the window by long, nervous strides.  His voice came back to the man at the table, while his eyes gazed down upon the waters of Farewell Cove, over the widespread roofs of the great groundwood mill, the building of which was the result of his seven years’ sojourn on the Labrador coast.

“You’ve handed it me, Bat,” he said, in a quick, nervous way.  “I’ll fight.  I know.  You guess I’m scared at Nisson’s news.  Maybe I am, I don’t know.  I’m not a man of iron guts.  Maybe I never shall be.  It’s hell to me to feel a shadow dogging my every step.  Yes, you’re right.  It’s been a nightmare, and now—­why, now it’s real.  But get your mind at rest.  I’m going to fight Hellbeam all I know.  And with the thought of Nancy, and the boy she’s going to give me, I don’t need a thing else.  No.”

“That’s how I figgered.”

Bat’s delight softened his hard eyes for the moment, and his attitude relaxed as Standing went on.

“You reckon I’ve no imagination,” he said.  “You reckon I’m just a calculating machine that can juggle figures better than any other machine.”  He shook his dark head.  “I guess you don’t do me full justice.  When I quit the university on the other side it was because I had built myself up a big dream.  I crossed to the United States with my imagination full of the things I hoped to do.  It was the chance I looked for.  And I found it in Hellbeam, and the Persian Oils it was his hobby to manipulate.  I jumped in and grabbed it with both hands.  And, as you say, I beat him at his own game.  But that was only part of my dream.  The next part you also know, though you choose to think it was only as a refuge from Hellbeam that I came here to Sachigo.  I admit circumstances have modified my original dream, but then I dreamed my first dream as a man unmarried.  Now I have added to it in the thought of the son my wife’s going to present me with.  After beating Hellbeam and making the fortune I desired, I didn’t flee here to the coast of Labrador as a mere refuge from the man you tell me I robbed.  No.  This place served its purpose that way, it’s true.  But it was the place I selected long since for the fulfilment of the second part of my dream.