l thing. He would have a lot to
tell Tessie Kearns in his next letter. Beyond the sawmill he came to
an immense wooden structure like a cradle on huge rockers supported by
scaffolding. From the ground he could make nothing of it, but a ladder
led to the top. An hour on the Holden lot had made him bold. He mounted
the ladder and stood on the deck of what he saw was a sea-going yacht.
Three important-looking men were surveying the deckhouse forward. They
glanced at the newcomer but with a cheering absence of curiosity or
even of interest. He sauntered past them with a polite but not-too-keen
interest. The yacht would be an expensive one. The deck fittings were
elaborate. A glance into the captain's cabin revealed it to be fully
furnished, with a chart and a sextant on the mahogany desk.

"Where's the bedding for this stateroom?" asked one of the men.

"I got a prop-rustler after it," one of the others informed him.

They strolled aft and paused by an iron standard ingeniously swung from
the deck.

"That's Burke's idea," said one of the men. "I hadn't thought about a
steady support for the camera; of course if we stood it on deck it would
rock when the ship rocked and we'd get no motion. So Burke figures this
out. The camera is on here and swings by that weight so it's always
straight and the rocking registers. Pretty neat, what?"

"That was nothing to think of" said one of the other men, in apparent
disparagement. "I thought of it myself the minute I saw it." The other
two grinned at this, though Merton Gill, standing by, saw nothing to
laugh at. He thought the speaker was pretty cheeky; for of course any
one could think of this device after seeing it. He paused for a final
survey of his surroundings from this elevation. He could see the real
falseness of the sawmill he had just left, he could also look into the
exposed rear of the railway station, and could observe beyond it
the exposed skeleton of that New York street. He was surrounded by
mockeries.

He clambered down the ladder and sauntered back to the street of
offices. He was by this time confident that no one was going to ask him
what right he had in there. Now, too, he became conscious of hunger
and at the same moment caught the sign "Cafeteria" over a neat building
hitherto unnoticed. People were entering this, many of them in costume.
He went idly toward the door, glanced up, looked at his watch, and
became, to any one curious about him, a man who had tha