ant to
quit this getting out on the job and doing a laborer's work. The office is
paying out good money to the men that should do that. You know how to lay
a corbel, but just now you couldn't tell me how much cribbing was coming.
You're paid to direct this whole job and to know all about it, not to lay
corbels. If you put in half a day swinging a sledge out there on the
spouting house, how're you going to know that the lumber bills tally, and
the carpenters ain't making mistakes, and that the timber's piled right.
Here today you had a dozen men throwing away their time moving a lot of
timber that ought to have been put in the right place when it first came
in."

Peterson was silent.

"Now tomorrow, Pete, as soon as you've got the work moving along, you'd
better go over to the electric light company and see about having the
whole ground wired for arc lamps,--so we can be ready to put on a night
shift the minute the cribbing comes in. You want to crowd 'em, too. They
ought to have it ready in two days."

Bannon sat for a moment, then he arose and looked at his watch.

"I'm going to leave you, Pete," he said, as he put on his collar.

"Where're you going?"

"I've got to get up to the city to make the ten o'clock train. I'm going
up to Ledyard to get the cribbing. Be back in a couple of days."

He threw his shaving kit into his grip, put on his overcoat, said
good-night, and went out.

CHAPTER III

Next morning at eight o'clock Charlie Bannon walked into the office of C.
H. Dennis, the manager of the Ledyard Salt and Lumber Company.

"I'm Bannon," he said, "of MacBride & Company. Come up to see why you
don't get out our bill of cribbing."

"Told you by letter," retorted Dennis. "We can't get the cars."

"I know you did. That's a good thing to say in a letter. I wanted to find
out how much of it really was cut."

"It's all cut and stacked by the siding, taking up half the yard. Want to
see it?"

Bannon smiled and nodded. "Here's a good cigar for you," he said, "and
you're a good fellow, but I think I'd like to see the cribbing."

"Oh, that's all right," laughed Dennis. "I'd have said the same thing if
it wasn't cut. Come out this way."

Bannon followed him out into the yard. "There it is," said the manager.

There was no need of pointing it out. It made a pile more than three
hundred feet long. It was nothing but rough hemlock, two inches thick, and
from two to ten inches wide, intended to be spiked