States, he's the limit, oh, the damnedest limit. He's a pest all round-
and now, this!"

Ingolby kept blinking reflectively as Jowett talked. He was doing two
things at once with a facility quite his own. He was understanding all
Jowett was saying, but he was also weighing the whole situation. His
mind was gone fishing, figuratively speaking. He was essentially a man
of action, but his action was the bullet of his mind; he had to be quiet
physically when he was really thinking. Then he was as one in a dream
where all physical motion was mechanical, and his body was acting
automatically. His concentration, and therefore his abstraction, was
phenomenal. Jowett's reminiscences at a time so critical did not disturb
him--did not, indeed, seem to be irrelevant. It was as though Felix
Marchand was being passed in review before him in a series of aspects.
He nodded encouragement to Jowett to go on.

"It's because Marchand hates you, Chief. The bump he got when you
dropped him on the ground that day at Carillon hurts still. It's a
chronic inflammation. Closing them railway offices at Manitou, and
dislodging the officials give him his first good chance. The feud
between the towns is worse now than it's ever been. Make no mistake.
There's a whole lot of toughs in Manitou. Then there's religion, and
there's race, and there's a want-to-stand-still and leave-me-alone-
feeling. They don't want to get on. They don't want progress. They
want to throw the slops out of the top windows into the street; they want
their cesspools at the front door; they think that everybody's got to
have smallpox some time or another, and the sooner they have it the
better; they want to be bribed; and they think that if a vote's worth
having it's worth paying for--and yet there's a bridge between these two
towns! A bridge--why, they're as far apart as the Yukon and Patagonia."