loyment, it was
necessary to let half of the men go for the night.

Soon, to the rattle of blocks and the tramping of feet and the calling and
shouting of men, was added the creak of the steamer's hoists, and the
groan of her donkey engines as her crew began the work of dumping out the
cribbing by hand and steam, on the cleared space on the wharf. And then,
when the last big stick had gone over, Peterson began sending bundles of
two-inch cribbing. Before the work was finished, and the last plank from
the steamer's cargo had been tossed on the pile by the annex, the first
faint color was spreading over the eastern sky, and the damp of a
low-country morning was in the air.

Bannon stopped the engine and drew the fire; Peterson and his crew
clambered to the ground, and Max put on his coat and waited for the two
foremen to come across the tracks. When they joined him, Bannon looked
sharply at him in the growing light.

"Hello, Max," he said; "where did you get that black eye?"

"That ain't much," Max replied. "You ought to see Briggs."

CHAPTER VI

When Bannon came on the job on Friday morning at seven o'clock, a group of
heavy-eyed men were falling into line at the timekeeper's window. Max was
in the office, passing out the checks. His sister was continuing her work
of the night before, going over what books and papers were to be found in
the desk. Bannon hung up his overcoat and looked through the doorway at
the square mass of the elevator that stood out against the sky like some
gigantic, unroofed barn. The walls rose nearly eighty feet from the
ground--though the length and breadth of the structure made them appear
lower--so close to the tops of the posts that were to support the cupola
frame that Bannon's eyes spoke of satisfaction. He meant to hide those
posts behind the rising walls of cribbing before the day should be gone.

He glanced about at the piles of two-inch plank that hid the annex
foundation work. There it lay, two hundred thousand feet of it--not very
much, to be sure, but enough to keep the men busy for the present, and
enough, too, to give a start to the annex bins and walls.

Peterson was approaching from the tool house, and Bannon called.

"How many laborers have you got, Pete?"

"Hardly any. Max, there, can tell." Max, who had just passed out his last
check, now joined them at the doorstep.

"There's just sixty two that came for checks," he said, "not counting the
carpenters."

"Abo