oretical
grade of the district, that is, about five feet above the actual level
of the ground. In winter and spring they are necessary causeways above
seas of mud, but in dry weather every one abandons them, to walk
straight to his destination over the uninterrupted flats. Bannon set
down his hand bag to button has ulster, for the wind was driving clouds
of smoke and stinging dust and an occasional grimy snowflake out of the
northwest. Then he sprang down from the sidewalk and made his way
through the intervening bogs and, heedless of the shouts of the
brakemen, over a freight train which was creaking its endless length
across his path, to the elevator site.

The elevator lay back from the river about sixty yards and parallel to
it. Between was the main line of the C. & S. C., four clear tracks
unbroken by switch or siding. On the wharf, along with a big pile of
timber, was the beginning of a small spouting house, to be connected
with the main elevator by a belt gallery above the C. & S. C. tracks. A
hundred yards to the westward, up the river, the Belt Line tracks
crossed the river and the C. & S. C. right of way at an oblique angle,
and sent two side tracks lengthwise through the middle of the elevator
and a third along the south side, that is, the side away from the river.

Bannon glanced over the lay of the land, looked more particularly at the
long ranges of timber to be used for framing the cupola, and then asked
a passing workman the way to the office. He frowned at the wretched
shanty, evidently an abandoned Belt Line section house, which Peterson
used for headquarters. Then, setting down his bag just outside the door,
he went in.

"Where's the boss?" he asked.

The occupant of the office, a clerk, looked up impatiently, and spoke in
a tone reserved to discourage seekers for work.

"He ain't here. Out on the job somewhere."

"Palatial office you've got," Bannon commented. "It would help those
windows to have'em ploughed." He brought his bag into the office and
kicked it under a desk, then began turning over a stack of blue prints
that lay, weighted down with a coupling pin, on the table.

"I guess I can find Peterson for you if you want to see him," said the
clerk.

"Don't worry about my finding him," came from Bannon, deep in his study
of the plans. A moment later he went out.

A gang of laborers was engaged in moving the timbers back from the
railroad siding. Superintending the work was a squat litt