These stupendous miles were, to-day, the furnaces and forges that Gilbert Penny had built and operated in the pastoral clearings of the Province.  Howat recalled the single, diminutive shed of Myrtle Forge, the slender stream, the wheel, its sole power; the solitary stack of Shadrach Furnace, recreated in his vision, opposed its insignificant bulk against the living greenery of overwhelming forests.  Now the forests were gone, obliterated by the mills that had grown out of Gilbert’s energy and determination, his pioneer courage.  His spirit, the indomitable will of a handful of men, a small, isolated colony, had swept forward in a resistless tide, multiplying invention, improvement, with success until, as Howat had seen, their flares reached to the clouds, their industry spread in iron cities.  James Polder had a part in this.  Here, under the ringing walls of the steel mills, he got a fresh comprehension of the bitter, restless virility of the younger man.

Out of the station Mariana furnished the driver of a public motor with James Polder’s address, and they twisted through congested streets, past the domed Capitol, rising from intense green sod, flanked by involved groups of sculpture, to a quieter reach lying parallel with the river.  They discovered Polder’s house occupying a corner, one of a short row of yellow brick with a scrap of lawn bound by a low wall, and a porch continuous across the face of the dwellings.

The door opened after a long interval, and a woman with bare arms and a spotted kitchen apron admitted them to an interior faintly permeated with the odours of cooking.  There were redly varnished chairs, upright piano, a heavily framed saccharine print of loves and a flushed, sleeping divinity; a table scarred by burning cigarettes, holding cerise knitting on needles one of which was broken, glasses with dregs of beer, a photograph in a tarnished silver frame of Harriet de Barry Polder with undraped shoulders and an exploited dimple, and a copy of a technical journal.  A fretful, shrill barking rose at their heels; and Howat Penny swung his stick at a diminutive, silky white dog with matted, pinkish eyes, obsessed by an impotent fury.

An indolent voice drifted from above.  “Cherette!” And a low, masculine protest was audible.  Mariana Jannan’s face was inscrutable.  The woman continued audibly, “How can I—­like this?  You will have to see what it is.”  A moment later James Polder, drawing on a coat, descended the stairs.  He saw Mariana at once, and stood arrested with one foot on the floor, and a hand clutching the rail.  A sudden pallor invaded his countenance and Howat turned away, inspecting the print.  But he could not close his hearing to the suppressed eagerness, the stammering joy, of Polder’s surprise.