Page:The Millbank Case - 1905 - Eldridge.djvu/115

 "It's no time for refinements or phrasings. It isn't the idle alone who expect impossibilities. Most of your people think Trafford's failed before he's had time to begin. There's got to be something done to feed their impatience and gain time. A Yankee's substitute for doing something is to hold a public meeting."

McManus shook his head.

"With the chances that it would end in a hanging-bee," he said.

When, however, McManus returned to Millbank from the county town, he found affairs so far more menacing than he had anticipated as to lead him to take counsel with the more prominent citizens. Naturally almost the first man to whom he broached the matter was Charles Hunter, the head of the leading logging firm.

Hunter was a man who at the age of thirty-five was already recognised as the first business man of the town. Succeeding to a business built up by his father, he had doubled it and doubled it again. Its operations extended over the entire northern part of the State, and into Canada, and were closely in