ers
knew that they had almost reached the end, and there was a rally like
that which a runner makes at the beginning of the last hundred yards.

Late in the afternoon they had a broad hint of how near the end was. The
sweepers dropped their brooms and began carrying fire buckets full of
water. They placed one or more near every bearing all over the elevator.
The men who were quickest to understand explained to the slower ones
what the precaution meant, and every man had his eye on the nearest
pulley to see when it would begin to turn.

But Bannon was not going to begin till he was ready. He had inspected
the whole job four times since noon, but just after six he went all over
it again, more carefully than before. At the end he stepped out of the
door at the bottom of the stairway bin, and pulled it shut after him. It
was not yet painted, and its blank surface suggested something. He drew
out his blue pencil and wrote on the upper panel:--

O.K.

C. H. BANNON.

Then he walked over to the power house. It was a one-story brick
building, with whose construction Bannon had had no concern, as Page &
Company had placed the contract for it elsewhere. Every night for the
past week lights had been streaming from its windows, and day and night
men had waited, ready at any time for the word to go ahead. A dozen of
them were lounging about the brick-paved space in front of the battery
of boilers when Bannon opened the door, and they sprang to their feet as
they read his errand in his face.

"Steam up," he said. "We'll be ready as soon as you are."

There was the accumulated tension of a week of inactivity behind these
men, and the effect of Bannon's words was galvanic. Already low fires
were burning under the boilers, and now the coal was piled on, the
draughts roared, the smoke, thick enough to cut, came billowing out of
the tall chimney. Every man in the room, even the wretchedest of the
dripping stokers, had his eyes on the steam gauges, but for all that the
water boiled, and the indicator needles crept slowly round the dials,
and at last the engineer walked over and pulled the whistle cord.

Hitherto they had marked the divisions of time on the job by the shrill
note of the little whistle on the hoisting engine boiler, and there was
not a man but started at the screaming crescendo of the big siren on top
of the power house. Men in the streets, in the straggling boarding
houses over across the flats, on the wha