do you like it?"

She was looking eagerly about; at the frame, a great skeleton of new
timber, some of it still holding so much of the water of river and
mill-yard that it glistened in the sunlight; at the moving groups of
men, the figure of Peterson standing out above the others on a high
girder, his arms knotted, and his neck bare, though the day was not
warm; at the straining hoist, trembling with each new load that came
swinging from somewhere below, to be hustled off to its place, stick by
stick; and then out into the west, where the November sun was dropping,
and around at the hazy flats and the strip of a river. She drew in her
breath quickly, and looked up at Bannon with a nervous little gesture.

"I like it," she finally said, after a long silence, during which they
had watched a big stick go up on one of the small hoists, to be swung
into place and driven home on the dowel pins by Peterson's sledge.

"Isn't Pete a hummer?" said Max. "I never yet saw him take hold of a
thing that was too much for him."

Neither Hilda nor Bannon replied to this, and there was another silence.

"Would you like to walk around and see things closer to?" Bannon asked,
turning to Miss Vogel.

"I wouldn't mind. It's rather cold, sitting still."

He led the way along one side of the structure, guiding her carefully in
places where the flooring was not yet secure.

"I'm glad you came up," he said. "A good many people think there's
nothing in this kind of work but just sawing wood and making money for
somebody up in Minneapolis. But it isn't that way. It's pretty, and
sometimes it's exciting; and things happen every little while that are
interesting enough to tell to anybody, if people only knew it. I'll have
you come up a little later, when we get the house built and the
machinery coming in. That's when we'll have things really moving.
There'll be some fun putting up the belt gallery, too. That'll be over
here on the other side."

He turned to lead the way across the floor to the north side of the
building. They had stopped a little way from the boom hoist, and she was
standing motionless, watching as the boom swung out and the rope rattled
to the ground. There was the puffing of the engine far below, the
straining of the rope, and the creaking of the blocks as the heavy load
came slowly up. Gangs of men were waiting to take the timbers the moment
they reached the floor. The foreman of the hoist gang was leaning out
over the