Even at that distance he knew who it was.

He had seen Fleda only a few times before, for she was little abroad; but when he had seen her he had asked himself what such a face and form were doing in the Far North.

It belonged to Andalusia, to the Carpathians, to Syrian villages.
"The pluck of the very devil!" he had exclaimed, as Fleda's canoe swept into the smooth current, free of the dragon's teeth; and as he had something of the devil in himself, she seemed much nearer to him than the hundreds of yards of water intervening.

Presently, however, he saw her droop and sink away out of sight.
For an instant he did not realize what had happened, and then, with angry self-reproach, he flung the oars into the rowlocks of his skiff and drove down and athwart the stream with long, powerful strokes.
"That's like a woman!" he said to himself as he bent to the oars, and now and then turned his head to make sure that the canoe was still safe.
"Do the trick better than a man, and then collapse like a rabbit." He was Max Ingolby, the financier, contractor, manager of great interests, disturber of the peace of slow minds, who had come to Lebanon with the avowed object of amalgamating three railways, of making the place the swivel of all the trade and interests of the Western North; but also with the declared intention of uniting Lebanon and Manitou in one municipality, one centre of commercial and industrial power.
Men said he had bitten off more than he could chew, but he had replied that his teeth were good, and he would masticate the meal or know the reason why.

He was only thirty-three, but his will was like nothing the West had seen as yet.