ough and never
stopped to look behind until they were well outside.

"Hy-sterics," said the carpenter who was married--"she's took a fit."

"Hydrophoby--she must a bit herself!" Porcupine Jim was vigorously
massaging his neck.

The bride was sitting on the floor beating her heels, when Bruce put his
head in the door cautiously:

"If there's anything I can do--"

Bertha renewed her screams at sight of him.

"They is--" she shrieked--"Git out!"

"You don't want to go near 'em when they're in a tantrum," advised the
carpenter in an experienced tone. "But that's about the hardest one I
ever see."

Jennings, staggering manfully under his burden, bore the hysterical
Amazon to her tent and it remained for Bruce to do her work.

"That's a devil of a job for a General Manager," commented John Johnson
sympathetically, as he stood in the doorway watching Bruce, with his
sleeves rolled up, scraping assiduously at the bottom of a frying-pan.

Bruce smiled grimly but made no reply. He had been thinking the same
thing himself.

Bruce often had watched an ant trying to move a bread-crumb many times
its size, pushing with all its feet braced, rushing it with its head,
backing off and considering and going at it again. Failing, running
frantically around in front to drag and pull and tug. Trying it this way
and that, stopping to rest for an instant then tackling it in fresh
frenzy--and getting nowhere, until, out of pity, he gave it a lift.

Bruce felt that this power-plant was his bread-crumb, and tug and push
and struggle as he would he could not make it budge. The thought, too,
was becoming a conviction that Jennings, who should have helped him
push, was riding on the other side.

"I wouldn't even mind his riding," Bruce said to himself ironically, "if
he wouldn't drag his feet."

He was hoping with all his heart that the much discussed cross-arms
would hold, for when the wires were up and stretched across the river he
would feel that the bread-crumb had at least _moved_.

When Bruce crossed to the work the next morning, the "come-along" was
clamped to the transmission wire and hooked to the block-and-tackle.
Naturally Jennings had charge of the stretching of the wire and he
selected Smaltz as his assistant.

All the crew, intensely interested in the test, stood around as
Jennings, taciturn and sour and addressing no one but Smaltz, puttered
about his preparations.

Finally he cried:

"Ready-O!"

The wire tig