FROM THE LIFE
facts of life with, a frankness that would have amazed mankind.
4
And Wat, meantime, arrived at the door of the Janes house because it was impossible for him not to arrive there. Alicia greeted him with her usual unchanging, gentle smile. He began to explain why he had not come that morning to take her to church; that his family—
"There's some one here," she said, unheeding. "Some one who wants to meet you. My brother!" And touching him lightly on the shoulder, she turned him toward the parlor and ushered him in to meet his future in the shape of Howard Janes.
Janes was then a tall, gaunt, feverish-eyed, dark enthusiast, of an extraordinary mental and physical restlessness a man who should have been a visionary, but had become an electrical engineer. He had been working on the project to develop electrical power at Niagara Falls, and in ten minutes he was describing to Wat the whole theory and progress of the work, past, present, and future. "In ten years," he said, "Niagara power will be shot all through this district for a hundred miles around, and here's Coulton asleep, with one of the best power projects in Canada right under its nose. Where? Smith's Falls. And here you are, with a dead town, a dead street-car line, a lot of dead real estate, and the power to make the whole
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