Anything to further this fore-ordained activity was good; anything
else was bad. These thoughts, aided by a disposition naturally
fervent and single in purpose, hereditarily ascetic and conscientious
--for his mother was of old New England stock--gave to him in the
course of six years' striving a sort of daily and familiar religion
to which he conformed his life.

Success, success, success. Nothing could be of more importance.
Its attainment argued a man's efficiency in the Scheme of Things,
his worthy fulfillment of the end for which a divine Providence had
placed him on earth. Anything that interfered with it--personal
comfort, inclination, affection, desire, love of ease, individual
liking,--was bad.

Luckily for Thorpe's peace of mind, his habit of looking on men as
things helped him keep to this attitude of mind. His lumbermen were
tools,--good, sharp, efficient tools, to be sure, but only because he
had made them so. Their loyalty aroused in his breast no pride nor
gratitude. He expected loyalty. He would have discharged at once
a man who did not show it. The same with zeal, intelligence, effort
--they were the things he took for granted. As for the admiration
and affection which the Fighting Forty displayed for him personally,
he gave not a thought to it. And the men knew it, and loved him the
more from the fact.

Thorpe cared for just three people, and none of them happened to
clash with his machine. They were Wallace Carpenter, little Phil,
and Injin Charley.

Wallace, for reasons already explained at length, was always