place."

He had got to the door when she asked:--

"Shall I put out the light?"

He turned and nodded. She was drawing on her gloves. She perhaps was not
a very pretty girl, but there was something in her manner, as she stood
there in the dim light, her hair straying out from beneath her white
"sombrero" hat, that for the moment took Bannon far away from this
environment of railroad tracks and lumber piles. He waited till she came
out, then he locked the door.

"I'll walk along with you myself, if you don't mind," he said. And after
they had crossed the Belt Line tracks, and he had helped her, with a
little laugh from each of them, to pick her way over the switches and
between the freight cars, he said: "You don't look much like your
brother."

It was not a long walk to the boarding house but before they had reached
it Bannon was nervous. It was not a custom with him to leave his work on
such an errand. He bade her a brusque good-night, and hurried back,
pausing only after he had crossed the tracks, to cast his eye over the
timber. There was no sign of activity, though the two arc lamps were
still in place. "All in, eh," he said.

He followed the path beside the elevator and on around the end, and
then, with an exclamation, he hurried forward; for there was the same
idle crowd about the tracks that had been there during the trouble with
the section boss--the same buzz of talk, and the idle laughter and
shouting. As he ran, his foot struck a timber-end, and he sprawled
forward for nearly a rod before recovering his balance; then he stopped
and looked along the ground. A long line of timbers lay end to end, the
timber hooks across them or near by on the ground, where they had been
dropped by the laborers. On along the path, through the fence openings,
and out on the tracks, lay the lines of timber. Here and there Bannon
passed gangs of men lounging on the ground, waiting for the order to
move on. As he passed through the fence, walking on the timbers, and
hurried through the crowd, which had been pushed back close to the
fence, he heard a low laugh that came along like a wave from man to man.
In a moment he was in front of them all.

The middle tracks were clear, excepting a group of three or four men,
who stood a little to one side. Bannon could not make them out. Another
crowd of laborers was pressed back against the opposite fence. These had
moved apart at one of the fence openings, and as Bannon looked, two me