The desire to get profit by honest toiling was dying down to ashes.
Against such men had Ingolby worked--the tricksters, the manipulators.
At the basis of his schemes was organization and the economy which concentrated and conserved energy begets, together with its profit.

He had been the enemy of waste, the apostle of frugality and thrift; and it was that which had enabled him, in his short career, to win the confidence of the big men behind him in Montreal, to make good every step of the way.

He had worked for profit out of legitimate product and industry and enterprise, out of the elimination of waste.

It was his theory (and his practice) that no bit of old iron, no bolt or screw, no scrap of paper should be thrown away; that the cinders of the engines could and should be utilized for that which they would make; and that was why there was a paper-mill and foundry on the Sagalac at Manitou.
That was why and how, so far, he had beaten the tricksters.
But while his schemes flashed before his mind, as the opiate suspended him in the middle heaven between sleep and waking, the tricksters and manipulators came hurrying after him like marauders that waited for the moment when they could rush the camp in the watches of the night.

His disordered imagination saw the ruin and wreck of his work, the seizure of what was his own--the place of control on his railways, the place of the Master Man who cared infinitely more to see his designs accomplished than for the profit they would bring to himself.