a hand.

"Oh, Mr. Bannon," she said, "are you sure it's strong enough? It doesn't
look safe."

"I think it's safe," he replied quietly. He vaulted into the box and
signalled to the laborers. Hilda stepped back off the block as he went up
perhaps a third of the way, and then came down. She said nothing, but
stepped on the block.

"How shall I get in?" she asked, laughing a little, but not looking at
Bannon.

"Here," said Bannon, "give us each a hand. A little jump'll do it. Max
here'll go along the ladders and steady you if you swing too much. Wait a
minute, though." He hurried out of doors, and returned with a light line,
one end of which he made fast to the box, the other he gave to Max.

"Now," he said, "you can guide it as nice as walking upstairs."

They started up, Hilda sitting in the box and holding tightly to the
sides, Max climbing the ladders with the end of the line about his wrist.
Bannon joined the laborers, and kept a hand on the hoisting rope.

"You'd better not look down," he called after her.

She laughed and shook her head. Bannon waited until they had reached the
top, and Max had lifted her out on the last landing; then, at Max's shout,
he made the rope fast and followed up the ladders.

He found them waiting for him near the top of the well.

"We might as well sit down," he said. He led the way to a timber a few
steps away. "Well, Miss Vogel, how do you like it?"

She was looking eagerly about; at the frame, a great skeleton of new
timber, some of it still holding so much of the water of river and
mill-yard that it glistened in the sunlight; at the moving groups of men,
the figure of Peterson standing out above the others on a high girder,
his arms knotted, and his neck bare, though the day was not warm; at the
straining hoist, trembling with each new load that came swinging from
somewhere below, to be hustled off to its place, stick by stick; and then
out into the west, where the November sun was dropping, and around at the
hazy flats and the strip of a river. She drew in her breath quickly, and
looked up at Bannon with a nervous little gesture.

"I like it," she finally said, after a long silence, during which they had
watched a big stick go up on one of the small hoists, to be swung into
place and driven home on the dowel pins by Peterson's sledge.

"Isn't Pete a hummer?" said Max. "I never yet saw him take hold of a thing
that was too much for him."

Neither Hilda nor Bannon repli