y strained and tugged and tusselled
up in the big swing, for it was nothing else, above the railroad tracks.
There was a northeast gale raging down off the lake, with squalls of
rain and sleet mixed up in it, and it took the crazy, swaying box in its
teeth and shook it and tossed it up in the air in its eagerness to strip
it off the cable. But somewhere there was an unconquerable tenacity that
held fast, and in the teeth of the wind the long box grew rigid, as the
trusses were pounded into place by men so spent with fatigue that one
might say it was sheer good will that drove the hammers.

At four o'clock Christmas afternoon the last bolt was drawn taut. The
gallery was done. Bannon had been on the work since midnight--sixteen
consecutive hours. He had eaten nothing except two sandwiches that he
had stowed in his pockets. His only pause had been about nine o'clock
that morning when he had put his head in the office door to wish Hilda a
Merry Christmas.

When the evening shift came on--that was just after four--one of the
under-foremen tried to get him to talking, but Bannon was too tired to
talk. "Get your tracks and rollers in," he said. "Take down the cable."

"Don't you want to stay and see if she'll hold when the cable comes
down?" called the foreman after him as he started away.

"She'll hold," said Bannon.

CHAPTER XV

Before December was half gone--and while the mild autumn weather
serenely held, in spite of weather predictions and of storm signs about
the sun and days of blue haze and motionless trees--the
newspaper-reading public knew all the outside facts about the fight in
wheat, and they knew it to be the biggest fight since the days of "Old
Hutch" and the two-dollar-a-bushel record. Indeed, there were men who
predicted that the two-dollar mark would be reached before Christmas,
for the Clique of speculators who held the floor were buying, buying,
buying--millions upon millions of dollars were slipping through their
ready hands, and still there was no hesitation, no weakening. Until the
small fry had dropped out the deal had been confused; it was too big,
there were too many interests involved, to make possible a clear
understanding, but now it was settling down into a grim fight between
the biggest men on the Board. The Clique were buying wheat--Page &
Company were selling it to them: if it should come out, on the
thirty-first of December, that Page & Company had sold more than they
could del