building the Leg.

MACBRIDE & Co.

Bannon read it carefully, folded it, opened it and read it again, then
tossed it on the desk. "We're off now, for sure," he said to Miss Vogel.
"I've known that was coming sure as Christmas."

Hilda picked it up.

"Is there an answer, Mr. Bannon?"

"No, just file it. Do you make it out?"

She read it and shook her head. Bannon ignored her cool manner.

"It means that your friends on MacBride & Company's Calumet house are
going to have the time of their lives for the next few weeks. I'm going to
carry compressed food in my pockets, and when meal time comes around, just
take a capsule."

"I think I know," she said slowly; "a marine leg is the thing that takes
grain up out of ships."

"That's right. You'd better move up head."

"And we've been building a spouting house instead to load it into ships."

"We'll have to build both now. You see, it's getting around to the time
when the Pages'll be having a fit every day until the machinery's running,
and every bin is full. And every time they have a fit, the people up at
the office'll have another, and they'll pass it on to us."

"But why do they want the marine leg?" she asked, "any more now than they
did at first?"

"They've got to get the wheat down by boat instead of rail, that's all. Or
likely it'll be coming both ways. There's no telling now what's behind it.
Both sides have got big men fighting. You've seen it in the papers,
haven't you?"

She nodded.

"Of course, what the papers say isn't all true, but it's lively doings all
right."

The next morning's mail brought the drawings and instructions; and with
them came a letter from Brown to Bannon. "I suppose there's not much good
in telling you to hurry," it ran; "but if there is another minute a day
you can crowd in, I guess you know what to do with it. Page told me today
that this elevator will make or break them. Mr. MacBride says that you can
have all January for a vacation if you get it through. We owe you two
weeks off, anyhow, that you didn't take last summer. We're running down
that C. & S. C. business, though I don't believe, myself, that they'll
give you any more trouble."

Bannon read it to Hilda, saying as he laid it down:--

"That's something like. I don't know where'll I go, though. Winter ain't
exactly the time for a vacation, unless you go shooting, and I'm no hand
for that."

"Couldn't you put it off till summer?" she asked, smiling a little.

"