e marine leg, but it was not serious.
They heard a splintering sound, down in the dark, somewhere, and Pete,
shouting to them to throw out the clutch, climbed out and down on the
sleet-clad girders that framed the leg. An agile monkey might have been
glad to return alive from such a climb, but Pete came back presently with
a curious specimen of marine hardware that had in some way got into the
wheat, and thence into the boot and one of the cups. Part way up it had
got jammed and had ripped up the sheathing of the leg. They started the
leg again, but soon learned that it was leaking badly.

"You'll have to haul up for repairs, I guess," the captain called up to
them.

"Haven't time," said Pete, under his breath, and with a hammer and nails,
and a big piece of sacking, he went down the leg again, playing his neck
against a half-hour's delay as serenely as most men would walk downstairs
to dinner. "Start her up, boys," he called, when the job was done, and,
with the leg jolting under his hands as he climbed, he came back into the
tower.

That was their only misfortune, and all it cost them was a matter of
minutes, so by noon of the thirtieth, an hour or two after MacBride and
young Page arrived from Minneapolis, it became clear that they would be
through in time.

At eight o'clock next morning, as Bannon and MacBride were standing in the
superintendent's office, he came in and held out his hand. "She's full,
Mr. Bannon. I congratulate you."

"Full, eh?" said MacBride. Then he dropped his hand on Bannon's shoulder.
"Well," he said, "do you want to go to sleep, or will you come and talk
business with me for a little while?"

"Sleep!" Bannon echoed. "I've been oversleeping lately."

CHAPTER XVII

The elevator was the place for the dinner, if only the mild weather that
had followed the Christmas storm should continue--on that Bannon, Pete,
and Max were agreed. New Year's Day would be a holiday, and there was room
on the distributing floor for every man who had worked an hour on the job
since the first spile had been driven home in the Calumet clay. To be sure
most of the laborers had been laid off before the installing of the
machinery, but Bannon knew that they would all be on hand, and he meant to
have seats for them. But on the night of the thirtieth the wind swung
around to the northeast, and it came whistling through the cracks in the
cupola walls with a sting in it that set the weighers to shivering. And as