e returning. "I'll guarantee to get you
up there somehow, if I have to build a stairway. Ninety feet's pretty
high, you know."

When Bannon reached the elevator he stood for a moment in the well at
the west end of the structure. This well, or "stairway bin," sixteen by
thirty-two feet, and open from the ground to the distributing floor,
occupied the space of two bins. It was here that the stairway would be,
and the passenger elevator, and the rope-drive for the transmission of
power from the working to the distributing floor. The stairway was
barely indicated by rude landings. For the present a series of eight
ladders zigzagged up from landing to landing. Bannon began climbing;
halfway up he met Max, who was coming down, time book in hand.

"Look here, Max," he said, "we're going to have visitors this afternoon.
If you've got a little extra time I'd like to have you help get things
ready."

"All right," Max replied. "I'm not crowded very hard to-day."

"I've asked your sister to come up and see the framing."

Max glanced down between the loose boards on the landing.

"I don't know," he said slowly; "I don't believe she could climb up here
very well."

"She won't have to. I'm going to put in a passenger elevator, and carry
her up as grand as the Palmer House. You put in your odd minutes between
now and three o'clock making a box that's big and strong enough."

Max grinned.

"Say, that's all right. She'll like that. I can do most of it at noon."

Bannon nodded and went on up the ladders. At the distributing floor he
looked about for a long timber, and had the laborers lay it across the
well opening. The ladders and landings occupied only about a third of
the space; the rest was open, a clear drop of eighty feet.

At noon he found Max in an open space behind the office, screwing iron
rings into the corners of a stout box. Max glanced up and laughed.

"I made Hilda promise not to come out here," he said. He waved his hand
toward the back wall of the office. Bannon saw that he had nailed strips
over the larger cracks and knot holes. "She was peeking, but I shut that
off before I'd got very far along. I don't think she saw what it was. I
only had part of the frame done."

"She'll be coming out in a minute," said Bannon.

"I know. I thought of that." Max threw an armful of burlap sacking over
the box. "That'll cover it up enough. I guess it's time to quit, anyway,
if I'm going to get any dinner. There's a littl