howed pale even at that distance.

"Now then, men," cried the framer. "Mind your pins. Are you ready?"
holding his hat high in the air.

"Ready," answered Rory.

Barney nodded.

"Git then!" he cried, flinging his hat hard on the ground. Like hounds
after a hare in full sight, like racers springing from the tape,
they leaped at the timbers, every man to his place, yelling like men
possessed. At once the admiring female friends broke into rival camps,
wildly enthusiastic, fiercely partisan.

"Well done, Rory! He's up first!" cried a girl whose brilliant
complexion and still more brilliant locks proclaimed her relationship to
the captain of the north side.

"Huh! Barney'll soon catch him, you'll see," cried Margaret. "Oh,
Barney, hurry! hurry!"

"Indeed, he will need to hurry," cried Rory's sister, mercilessly
exultant. "He's up! He's up!"

Sure enough, Rory, riding the first half of his plate over the bent, had
just "broken it down," and in half a minute, seized by the men detailed
for this duty, it was in its place upon the posts. Like cats, three men
with mauls were upon it driving the pins home just as the second half
was making its appearance over the bent, to be seized and placed and
pinned as its mate had been.

"He's won! He's won!" shrieked Rory's admiring faction.

"Barney! Barney!" screamed his contingent reproachfully.

"Well done, Rory! Keep at it! You've got them beaten!"

"Beaten, indeed!" was the scornful reply. "Just wait a minute."

"They're at the 'purlines'!" shrieked Rory's sister, and her friends,
proceeding to scream wildly after the female method of expressing
emotion under such circumstances.

"My!" sniffed a contemptuous member of Barney's faction, suffering
unutterable pangs of humiliation. "Some people don't mind making a show
of themselves."

"Oh, Barney! why don't you hurry?" cried Margaret, to whose eager spirit
Barney's movements seemed painfully and almost wilfully slow.

But Barney had laid his plans. Dividing his men into squads, he had been
carrying out the policy of simultaneous preparation, and while part of
his men had been getting the plates to their places, others had been
making ready the "purlines" and laying the rafters in order so that,
although beaten by Rory in the initial stages of the struggle, when once
his plates were in position, while Rory's men were rushing about in
more or less confusion after their rafters, Barney's purlins and rafters
moved to th