ways?"

"Eighteen to thirty miles, according to who you ask. As soon as things got
to going we went after the General Manager and gave him a bad half hour;
so I shouldn't be surprised to see the rest of the bill coming in by rail
any time now."

Bannon got up and slowly buttoned his coat. He was looking about the
office, at the mud-tracked floor and the coated windows, and at the
hanging shreds of spider web in the corners and between the rafters
overhead.

"It ain't a very cheerful house to live in all day, is it?" he said. "I
don't know but what we'd better clean house a little. There's not much
danger of putting a shine on things that'll hurt your eyes. We ought to be
able to get hold of some one that could come in once in a while and stir
up the dust. Do you know of any one?"

"There is a woman that comes to our boarding-house. I think they know
about her at the hotel."

He went to the telephone and called up the hotel.

"She'll be here this afternoon," he said as he hung up the receiver. "Will
she bring her own scrubbing things, or are we supposed to have them for
her? This is some out of my line."

Miss Vogel was smiling.

"She'll have her own things, I guess. When she comes, would you like me to
start her to work?"

"If you'd just as soon. And tell her to make a good job of it. I've got to
go out now, but I'll be around off and on during the day."

When the noon whistle blew Bannon and Max were standing near the annex.
Already the bins and walls had been raised more than a foot above the
foundation, which gave it the appearance of a great checker-board.

"Looks like business, doesn't it," said Max. He was a little excited, for
now there was to be no more delaying until the elevator should stand
completed from the working floor to the top, one hundred and sixty feet
above the ground; until engines, conveyors, and scales should be working
smoothly and every bin filled with grain. Indeed, nearly everybody on the
job had by this time caught the spirit of energy that Bannon had infused
into the work.

"I'll be glad when it gets up far enough to look like something, so we can
feel that things are really getting on."

"They're getting on all right," Bannon replied.

"How soon will we be working on the cupola?"

"Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow!" Max stopped (they had started toward the office) and looked at
Bannon in amazement. "Why, we can't do it, can we?"

"Why not?" Bannon pointed toward a cleared space