s delay would not have been so serious.

But one northeaster as yet had struck the work. This had carried away
some of the upper planking--the false work of the coffer-dam; but this
had been repaired in a few hours without delay or serious damage. After
that the Indian summer had set in--soft, dreamy days when the winds
dozed by the hour, the waves nibbled along the shores, and the swelling
breast of the ocean rose and fell as if in gentle slumber.

But would this good weather last? Babcock rose hurriedly, as this
anxiety again took possession of him, and leaned over the deck-rail,
scanning the sky. He did not like the drift of the low clouds off to the
west; southeasters began that way. It looked as though the wind might
change.

Some men would not have worried over these possibilities. Babcock did.
He was that kind of man.

When the boat touched the shore, he sprang over the chains, and hurried
through the ferry-slip.

"Keep an eye out, sir," the bridge-tender called after him,--he had been
directing him to Grogan's house,--"perhaps Tom may be on the road."

Then it suddenly occurred to Babcock that, so far as he could remember,
he had never seen Mr. Thomas Grogan, his stevedore. He knew Grogan's
name, of course, and would have recognized his signature affixed to the
little cramped notes with which his orders were always acknowledged, but
the man himself might have passed unnoticed within three feet of him.
This is not unusual where the work of a contractor lies in scattered
places, and he must often depend on strangers in the several localities.

As he hurried over the road he recalled the face of Grogan's foreman,
a big blond Swede, and that of Grogan's daughter, a slender fair-haired
girl, who once came to the office for her father's pay; but all efforts
at reviving the lineaments of Grogan failed.

With this fact clear in his mind, he felt a tinge of disappointment.
It would have relieved his temper to unload a portion of it upon the
offending stevedore. Nothing cools a man's wrath so quickly as not
knowing the size of the head he intends to hit.

As he approached near enough to the sea-wall to distinguish the swinging
booms and the puffs of white steam from the hoisting-engines, he saw
that the main derrick was at work lowering the buckets of mixed concrete
to the divers. Instantly his spirits rose. The delay on his contract
might not be so serious. Perhaps, after all, Grogan had started work.

When he