st chance I ever took as it is."

So while they stared at the second hands of their watches the minutes
crept away--Pete wound his watch up tight in the vain hope of making it go
a little faster--and at last Bannon turned with a nod to the
superintendent.

"All right," he said. "You're the boss now."

And then in a moment the straining hawsers were hauling cars up into the
house. The seals were broken, the doors rolled back, and the wheat came
pouring out. The shovellers clambered into the cars and the steam power
shovels helped the torrent along. It fell through the gratings, into steel
tanks, and then the tireless metal cups carried it up, up, up, 'way to the
top of the building. And then it came tumbling down again; down into
garners, and down again into the great weighing hoppers, and recognized
and registered and marketable at last, part of the load that was to bury
the Clique that had braved it out of sight of all but their creditors, it
went streaming down the spouts into the bins.

The first of the barges in the river was moved down beside the spouting
house, her main hatch just opposite the tower. And now Pete, in charge
there, gave the word, and the marine leg, gravely, deliberately descended.
There is a magnificent audacity about that sort of performance. The leg
was ninety feet long, steel-booted, framed of great timbers, heavy enough
to have wrecked the barge like a birch baric canoe if it had got away. It
went down bodily into the hold and the steel boot was buried in wheat.
Then Pete threw another lever, and in a moment another endless series of
cups was carrying the wheat aloft. It went over the cross-head and down a
spout, then stretched out in a golden ribbon along the glistening white
belt that ran the length of the gallery. Then, like the wheat from the
cars, it was caught up again in the cups, and shot down through spouts,
and carried along on belts to the remotest bins in the annex.

For the first few hours of it the men's nerves were hair springs, but as
time went on and the stream kept pouring in without pause, the tension
relaxed though the watch never slackened. Men patted the bearings
affectionately, and still the same report came to Bannon, "All cool."

Late that night, as the superintendent was figuring his weighing reports,
he said to Bannon, "At this rate, we'll have several hours to spare."

"We haven't had our accident yet," said Bannon, shortly.

It happened within an hour, at th