nd found Max, who had brought the carpet for the
box and was looking over his work. The rope led up to the top of the well
through a pulley and then back to the working floor and through another
pulley, so that the box could be hoisted from below.

"It's all ready," said Max. "It'll run up as smooth as you want."

"You'd better go for your sister, then," Bannon replied.

Max hesitated.

"You meant for me to bring her?"

"Yes, I guess you might as well."

Bannon stood looking after Max as he walked along the railroad track out
into the open air. Then he glanced up between the smooth walls of cribbing
that seemed to draw closer and closer together until they ended, far
overhead, in a rectangle of blue sky. The beam across the top was a black
line against the light. The rope, hanging from it, swayed lazily. He
walked around the box, examining the rings and the four corner ropes, and
testing them.

Hilda was laughing when she came with Max along the track. Bannon could
not see her at first for the intervening rows of timbers that supported
the bins. Then she came into view through an opening between two "bents"
of timber, beyond a heap of rubbish that had been thrown at one side of
the track. She was trying to walk on the rail, one arm thrown out to
balance, the other resting across Max's shoulders. Her jacket was buttoned
snugly up to the chin, and there was a fresh color in her face.

Bannon had called in three laborers to man the rope; they stood at one
side, awaiting the order to haul away. He found a block of wood, and set
it against the box for a step.

"This way, Miss Vogel," he called. "The elevator starts in a minute. You
came pretty near being late."

"Am I going to get in that?" she asked; and she looked up, with a little
gasp, along the dwindling rope.

"Here," said Max, "don't you say nothing against that elevator. I call it
pretty grand."

She stood on the block, holding to one of the ropes, and looking
alternately into the box and up to the narrow sky above them.

"It's awfully high," she said. "Is that little stick up there all that's
going to hold me up?"

"That little stick is ten-by-twelve," Max replied. "It would hold more'n a
dozen of you."

She laughed, but still hesitated. She lowered her eyes and looked about
the great dim space of the working story with its long aisles and its
solid masses of timber. Suddenly she turned to Bannon, who was standing at
her side, waiting to give her