I ever did to deserving a silk
hat."

"Oh," she said, the earnest expression skipping abruptly out of her
eyes; "did your hat come?"

"Not a sign of it. I'd clean forgotten. I'll give Brown one more
warning--a long 'collect' telegram, about forty words--and then if he
doesn't toe up, I'll get one and send him the bill.

"There was a man that looked some like Grady worked for me on the
Galveston house. He was a carpenter, and thought he stood for the whole
Federation of Labor. He got gay one day. I warned him once, and then I
threw him off the distributing floor."

Hilda thought he was joking until she looked up and saw his face.

"Didn't it--didn't it kill him?" she asked.

"I don't remember exactly. I think there were some shavings there." He
stood looking at her for a moment. "Do you know," he said, "if Grady
comes up on the job again, I believe I'll tell him that story? I wonder
if he'd know what I meant."

The spouting house, or "river house," was a long, narrow structure, one
hundred feet by thirty-six, built on piles at the edge of the wharf. It
would form, with the connecting belt gallery that was to reach out over
the tracks, a T-shaped addition to the elevator. The river house was no
higher than was necessary for the spouts that would drop the grain
through the hatchways of the big lake steamers, twenty thousand bushels
an hour--it reached between sixty and seventy feet above the water. The
marine tower that was to be built, twenty-four feet square, up through
the centre of the house, would be more than twice as high. A careful
examination convinced Bannon that the pile foundations would prove
strong enough to support this heavier structure, and that the only
changes necessary would be in the frame of the spouting house. On the
same day that the plans arrived, work on the tower commenced.

Peterson had about got to the point where startling developments no
longer alarmed him. He had seen the telegram the day before, but his
first information that a marine tower was actually under way came when
Bannon called off a group of laborers late in the afternoon to rig the
"trolley" for carrying timber across the track.

"What are you going to do, Charlie?" he called. "Got to slide them
timbers back again?"

"Some of 'em," Bannon replied.

"Don't you think we could carry 'em over?" said Peterson. "If we was
quiet about it, they needn't be any trouble?"

Bannon shook his head.

"We're not taking any more