hing's done it looks this way. You see
where the two sections meet in the middle, it's just the same as the
little fifteen-foot gallery that we made a picture of up here."

"I understand that all right," said Pete, "but I don't see yet how you're
going to do it without some kind of scaffolding."

"Easy. I ain't going to use a balloon, but I've got something that's
better. It'll be out here this afternoon. Come and help me get things
ready."

There was not much to do, for the timber was already cut to the right
sizes, but Bannon was not content till everything was piled so that when
work did begin on the gallery it could go without a hitch. He was already
several days behind, and when one is figuring it as fine as Bannon was
doing in those last days, even one day is a serious matter. He could do
nothing more at the belt gallery until his substitute for a scaffold
should arrive; it did not come that afternoon or evening, and next morning
when he came on the job it still had not been heard from. There was enough
to occupy every moment of his time and every shred of his thought without
bothering about the gallery, and he did not worry about it as he would
have worried if he had had nothing to do but wait for it.

But when, well along in the afternoon, a water boy found him up on the
weighing floor and told him there was something for him at the office, he
made astonishing time getting down. "Here's your package," said Max, as
Bannon burst into the little shanty. It was a little, round, pasteboard
box. If Bannon had had the office to himself, he would, in his
disappointment, have cursed the thing till it took fire. As it was, he
stood speechless a moment and then turned to go out again.

"Aren't you going to open it, now you're here?" asked Max.

Bannon, after hesitating, acted on the suggestion, and when he saw what it
was, he laughed. No, Brown had not forgotten the hat! Max gazed at it in
unfeigned awe; it was shiny as a mirror, black as a hearse, tall, in
his eyes--for this was his first near view of one--as the seat of a
dining-room chair. "Put it on," he said to Bannon. "Let's see how it looks
on you."

"Not much. Wouldn't I look silly in a thing like that, though? I'd rather
wear an ordinary length of stovepipe. That'd be durable, anyway. I wonder
what Brown sent it for. I thought he knew a joke when he saw one."

Just then one of the under-foremen came in. "Oh, Mr. Bannon," he said,
"I've been looking for you