Up this he toiled slowly, starting at every
step avalanches and streams down the slope. Shortly he found
himself on the summit, and paused for a breath of air from the lake.
He was just above the tops of the maples, which seen from this angle
stretched away like a forest through which occasionally thrust roofs
and spires. Some distance beyond a number of taller buildings and
the red of bricks were visible. Beyond them still were other sand-
hills, planted raggedly with wind-twisted and stunted trees. But
between the brick buildings and these sand-hills flowed the river--
wide, deep, and still--bordered by the steamboat landings on the
town side and by fishermen's huts and net-racks and small boats on
the other. Orde seated himself on the smooth, clean sand and
removed his hat. He saw these things, and in imagination the far
upper stretches of the river, with the mills and yards and booms
extending for miles; and still above them the marshes and the
flats where the river widened below the Big Bend. That would be the
location for the booms of the new company--a cheap property on which
the partners had already secured a valuation. And below he dropped
in imagination with the slackening current until between two greater
sand-hills than the rest the river ran out through the channel made
by two long piers to the lake--blue, restless, immeasurable.
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