e red that outcropped from Max's big
head; it was of a dark, rich color, and it had caught the light from the
lamp with such a shine as there is in new red gold. When he entered, she
was again footing columns. She was slender, and her hand, where it
supported her forehead was white. Again Bannon stood motionless, slowly
shaking his head. Then he came forward. She heard his step and looked up,
as if to answer a question, letting her eyes rest on his face. He
hesitated, and she quietly asked:--

"What is it, please?"

"Miss Vogel?"

"Yes."

"I'm Mr. Bannon. There wasn't any need of your working tonight. I'm just
keeping the men on so we can get in this cribbing. When did you come?"

"My brother telephoned to me. I wanted to look things over before starting
in tomorrow."

"How do you find it?"

She hesitated, glancing over the jumble of papers on the desk.

"It hasn't been kept up very well," she presently said. "But it won't be
hard, I think, to straighten it out."

Bannon leaned on the rail and glanced at the paper on which she had been
setting down totals.

"I guess you'd better go home, Miss Vogel. It's after nine o'clock."

"I can finish in an hour."

"You'd better go. There'll be chances enough for night work without your
making them."

She smiled, cleared up the desk, and reached for her jacket, which hung
from the nail behind her. Then she paused.

"I thought I would wait for my brother, Mr. Bannon."

"That's all right. I guess we can spare him. I'll speak to him. Do you
live far?"

"No; Max and I are boarding at the same place."

He had got to the door when she asked:--

"Shall I put out the light?"

He turned and nodded. She was drawing on her gloves. She perhaps was not a
very pretty girl, but there was something in her manner, as she stood
there in the dim light, her hair straying out from beneath her white
"sombrero" hat, that for the moment took Bannon far away from this
environment of railroad tracks and lumber piles. He waited till she came
out, then he locked the door.

"I'll walk along with you myself, if you don't mind," he said. And after
they had crossed the Belt Line tracks, and he had helped her, with a
little laugh from each of them, to pick her way over the switches and
between the freight cars, he said: "You don't look much like your
brother."

It was not a long walk to the boarding house but before they had reached
it Bannon was nervous. It was not a custom with him t