hitch in the work on
the gallery. The day shift was on again, and twenty-four of Bannon's
forty-eight hours were spent, when he happened to say to a man:--

"Never mind that now, but be sure you fix it tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?" the man repeated. "We ain't going to work tomorrow, are we?"

Bannon noticed that every man within hearing stopped work, waiting for the
answer. "Sure," he said. "Why not?"

There was some dissatisfied grumbling among them which he was quite at a
loss to understand until he caught the word "Christmas."

"Christmas!" he exclaimed, in perfectly honest astonishment. "Is tomorrow
Christmas?" He ran his hand through his stubby hair. "Boys," he said, "I'm
sorry to have to ask it of you. But can't we put it off a week? Look here.
We need this day. Now, if you'll say Christmas is a week from tomorrow,
I'll give every man on the job a Christmas dinner that you'll never
forget; all you can eat and as much again, and you bring your friends, if
we work tomorrow and we have her full of wheat a week from today. Does
that go?"

It went, with a ripping cheer to boot; a cheer that was repeated here and
there all over the place as Bannon's offer was passed along.

So for another twenty-four hours they strained and tugged and tusselled up
in the big swing, for it was nothing else, above the railroad tracks.
There was a northeast gale raging down off the lake, with squalls of rain
and sleet mixed up in it, and it took the crazy, swaying box in its teeth
and shook it and tossed it up in the air in its eagerness to strip it off
the cable. But somewhere there was an unconquerable tenacity that held
fast, and in the teeth of the wind the long box grew rigid, as the trusses
were pounded into place by men so spent with fatigue that one might say it
was sheer good will that drove the hammers.

At four o'clock Christmas afternoon the last bolt was drawn taut. The
gallery, was done. Bannon had been on the work since midnight--sixteen
consecutive hours. He had eaten nothing except two sandwiches that he had
stowed in his pockets. His only pause had been about nine o'clock that
morning when he had put his head in the office door to wish Hilda a Merry
Christmas.

When the evening shift came on--that was just after four--one of the
under-foremen tried to get him to talking, but Bannon was too tired to
talk. "Get your tracks and rollers in," he said. "Take down the cable."

"Don't you want to stay and see if she'll hold