dy," he said, "this is where our ground stops. The other
sides are the road there, and the river, and the last piles of cribbing
at the other end. I'm telling you so you will know where you don't
belong. Now, get out!"

CHAPTER XIV

The effect of the victory was felt everywhere. Not only were Max and
Pete and Hilda jubilant over it, but the under-foremen, the timekeepers,
even the laborers attacked their work with a fresher energy. It was like
the first whiff of salt air to an army marching to the sea. Since the
day when the cribbing came down from Ledyard, the work had gone forward
with almost incredible rapidity; there had been no faltering during the
weeks when Grady's threatened catastrophe was imminent, but now that the
big shadow of the little delegate was dispelled, it was easier to see
that the huge warehouse was almost finished. There was still much to do,
and the handful of days that remained seemed absurdly inadequate; but it
needed only a glance at what Charlie Bannon's tireless, driving energy
had already accomplished to make the rest look easy. "We're sure of it
now. She'll be full to the roof before the year is out." As Max went
over the job with his time-book next morning, he said it to every man he
met, and they all believed him. Peterson, the same man and not the same
man either, who had once vowed that there wouldn't be any night work on
Calumet K, who had bent a pair of most unwilling shoulders to the work
Bannon had put upon them, who had once spent long, sulky afternoons in
the barren little room of his new boarding-house; Peterson held himself
down in bed exactly three hours the morning after that famous victory.
Before eleven o'clock he was sledging down a tottering timber at the
summit of the marine tower, a hundred and forty feet sheer above the
wharf. Just before noon he came into the office and found Hilda there
alone.

He had stopped outside the door to put on his coat, but had not buttoned
it; his shirt, wet as though he had been in the lake, clung to him and
revealed the outline of every muscle in his great trunk. He flung his
hat on the draughting-table, and his yellow hair seemed crisper and
curlier than ever before.

"Well, it looks as though we was all right," he said.

Hilda nodded emphatically. "You think we'll get through in time, don't
you, Mr. Peterson?"

"Think!" he exclaimed. "I don't have to stop to think. Here comes Max;
just ask him."

Max slammed the door be