organization. If he had shown neither special aptitude for nor
interest in the business, he had at least not signally failed to
show either. Now, paper and pencil in hand, Clayton jotted down
the various details of the new system in their sequence; the building
of a forging plant to make the rough casts for the new Italian shells
out of the steel from the furnaces, the construction of a new spur
to the little railway which bound the old plant together with its
shining steel rails. There were questions of supplies and shipping
and bank credits to face, the vast and complex problems of the
complete new munition works, to be built out of town and involving
such matters as the housing of enormous numbers of employees. He
scrawled figures and added them. Even with the size of the foreign
contract their magnitude startled him. He leaned back, his mouth
compressed, the lines from the nostrils to the corners deeper than
ever.

He had completely forgotten Natalie and the country house.

Outside the gates to the mill enclosure he heard an early extra
being called, and bought it. The Austrian premier had been
assassinated. The successful French counter-attack against Verdun
was corroborated, also. On the center of the front page was the
first photograph to reach America of a tank. He inspected it with
interest. So the Allies had at last shown same inventive genius
of their own! Perhaps this was but the beginning. Even at that,
enough of these fighting mammoths, and the war might end quickly.
With the tanks, and the Allied offensive and the evidence of
discontent in Austria, the thing might after all be over before
America was involved.