s, but I
never had a man come up and say: 'Mr. Bannon, I'm going to lick you. Any
time when you're ready.' There's generally from three to thirty, and they
all try to get on your back."

Peterson laughed reminiscently. "I was an attendant in the insane ward of
the Massachusetts General Hospital for a while, and one time when I wasn't
looking for it, twenty four of those lunatics all jumped on me at once.
They got me on the floor and 'most killed me." He paused, as though there
was nothing more to tell.

"Don't stop there," said Max.

"Why," he went on, "I crawled along the floor till I got to a chair, and I
just knocked 'em around with that till they was quiet."

Bannon looked at his watch; then he took Brown's letter from his pocket.
"It's from the office," he said. "We've got to have the bins full before
New Year's Day."

"Got to!" exclaimed Pete. "I don't see it that way. We can't do it."

"Can or can't, that don't interest MacBride a bit. He says it's got to be
done and it has."

"Why, he can't expect us to do it. He didn't say anything about January
first to me. I didn't know it was a rush job. And then we played in hard
luck, too, before you came. That cribbing being tied up, for instance. He
certainly can't blame us if--"

"That's got nothing to do with it," Bannon cut in shortly. "He don't pay
us to make excuses; he pays us to do as we're told. When I have to begin
explaining to MacBride why it can't be done, I'll send my resignation
along in a separate envelope and go to peddling a cure for corns. What we
want to talk about is how we're going to do it."

Peterson flushed, but said nothing, and Bannon went on: "Now, here's what
we've got to do. We've got to frame the cupola and put on the roof and
sheathe the entire house with galvanized iron; we've got to finish the
spouting house and sheathe that; we've got to build the belt gallery--and
we'll have no end of a time doing it if the C. & S. C. is still looking
for trouble. Then there's all the machinery to erect and the millwright
work to do. And we've got to build the annex."

"I thought you was going to forget that," said Pete. "That's the worst job
of all."

"No, it ain't. It's the easiest. It'll build itself. It's just a case of
two and two makes four. All you've got to do is spike down two-inch planks
till it's done, and then clap on some sort of a roof. There's no
machinery, no details, just straight work. It's just a question of having
the l