They discussed the matter during the day, and that evening they again visited the falls. From the trapper Donald learned that the supply of water was unfailing. Owing to the natural formation, the cost of building the dam would be small. Donald’s friends became as enthusiastic as himself.
“We’ll be finished to-morrow night, Douglas,” announced Gillis that evening. “If you and Donald want to, you can go to town and put this proposition up to your father.”
The lines of steel were creeping north slowly but surely. As they left the cabin to start for the Coast, the first faint boom of a blast was brought to their ears by the southern breeze. Ten miles south of the lake they came to steel and rode to Squamish in the cab of a locomotive, reaching Vancouver that night.
Douglas informed Donald over the ’phone the next morning that his father would give him a hearing at two o’clock that afternoon.
As Donald thought of the impending meeting he experienced certain inward qualms. He felt that Renwick would oppose him, and wondered if Robert Rennie would consider him conceited and forward in suggesting such a radical innovation.
At the appointed hour Donald and Douglas entered the office of the R. C. & L. Co. Robert Rennie greeted Donald with a friendly smile and motioned to chairs near the desk. “You have some papers with you, I presume,” he said.
Donald placed the rough plans on the desk before him. For five minutes Robert Rennie studied them quietly while Donald fidgeted. Without comment, he leaned back in his chair for a moment, apparently in deep thought. Presently he pressed a button at the side of his desk.
“Send Renwick, Bolton and King here,” he said to the boy who answered the bell.
As the men entered the room Donald had no difficulty in recognizing Renwick from Gillis’s description. Robert Rennie rose to introduce Donald, then spoke in quick, flashing sentences, that went straight to the heart of things, as he spread the plans on the table before them.
As Donald had anticipated, Renwick, after a short scrutiny of the papers, objected strenuously, his chief objection being the initial cost, together with the fact that experience had demonstrated that only small mills had proved a success when electrically driven. Bolton was of the same opinion, but he admitted that if the supply of timber were sufficient to keep the mill in operation for years, the initial cost would be offset by the economy of operation.