The Rapids by Alan Sullivan — Read

And all this time the chief constable of St. Marys was speculating in property with steadily increasing success. So crafty was he that few people in the town knew it. When the fourth year of Clark's regime was completed, Manson had made profits that astonished him. His purchases covered both farm and town lands, and amongst the latter was a mortgage on the vine clad cottage of Fisette. But not a man in his circle would have guessed that what prompted the acquisition of the Fisette mortgage was Manson's remembrance of a friendly joke about a Unitarian wolf; a joke which still lived and set up a minute but unceasing irritation. Now, at any time, Manson might be in a position to teach the bishop a lesson.

It fell on a day that he was at the head of the old portage leading round the rapids. Here he had recently acquired an option on a considerable acreage, calculating that before long a new town would spring up in the shadow of the works, and, just as he pushed through the underbrush and came out on the gravel beach, he caught the flash of a paddle a mile away. He was hot and breathless and, lighting his big pipe, sat in the shade, his ruminative eye on the fast approaching canoe. Twenty minutes later it touched the shore, and Fisette, leaning forward on the thwarts, surveyed him with black and lustrous eyes.