l.
Or likely it'll be coming both ways. There's no telling now what's
behind it. Both sides have got big men fighting. You've seen it in the
papers, haven't you?"

She nodded.

"Of course, what the papers say isn't all true, but it's lively doings
all right."

The next morning's mail brought the drawings and instructions; and with
them came a letter from Brown to Bannon. "I suppose there's not much
good in telling you to hurry," it ran; "but if there is another minute a
day you can crowd in, I guess you know what to do with it. Page told me
to-day that this elevator will make or break them. Mr. MacBride says
that you can have all January for a vacation if you get it through. We
owe you two weeks off, anyhow, that you didn't take last summer. We're
running down that C. & S. C. business, though I don't believe, myself,
that they'll give you any more trouble."

Bannon read it to Hilda, saying as he laid it down:--

"That's something like. I don't know where'll I go, though. Winter ain't
exactly the time for a vacation, unless you go shooting, and I'm no hand
for that."

"Couldn't you put it off till summer?" she asked, smiling a little.

"Not much. You don't know those people. By the time summer'd come
around, they'd have forgotten I ever worked here. I'd strike for a month
and Brown would grin and say: 'That's all right, Bannon, you deserve it
if anybody does. It'll take a week or so to get your pass arranged, and
you might just run out to San Francisco and see if things are going the
way they ought to,' And then the first thing I knew I'd be working three
shifts somewhere over in China, and Brown would be writing me I was
putting in too much time at my meals. No, if MacBride & Company offer
you a holiday, the best thing you can do is to grab it, and run, and saw
off the telegraph poles behind you. And you couldn't be sure of yourself
then."

He turned the letter over in his hand.

"I might go up on the St. Lawrence," he went on. "That's the only place
for spending the winter that ever struck me."

"Isn't it pretty cold?"

"It ain't so bad. I was up there last winter. We put up at a house at
Coteau, you know. When I got there the foundation wasn't even begun, and
we had a bad time getting laborers. I put in the first day sitting on
the ice sawing off spiles."

Hilda laughed.

"I shouldn't think you'd care much about going back."

"Were you ever there?" he asked.

"No, I've never been anywhere but home