foreign to his life's plans, past
and future, as suicide.

She smiled as she thought of the reason of his presence, and blew a
kiss over the edge to his unsuspecting head. This, the great task of
her father's career, would mark the end of Conrad's apprenticeship.
These days of a mass attack on the bottomless pit might be the
beginning of the end. When the mass of logs and trees and rocks was
dumped in, surely she could lay her plans for a new life! Conrad would
return to the city, to the partnership he had dropped only temporarily
to be near her; and her father would have enough for the rest of his
days.

A week or two to test the success of their latest effort, another to
build the permanent foundations and strengthen the trestle in its final
shape, and then a few weeks at most for the fill-in. Already the wave
in the trestle beneath the supply trains was scarcely noticeable. The
end was in sight.

Her father she could pick out easily enough--that still, large figure
standing by itself, or joined now and then by Adrian. Once it jerked
forward, and half a dozen men catapulted themselves at some part of the
work that did not please him.

Presently Adrian and two others gathered before the contractor, where
they seemed to confer a long time. One, Tressa knew, would be
Koppowski; the other must be one of his friends, Werner probably, or
Morani, or Heppel. They alone of the five hundred possessed
intelligence enough to justify consultation. The rest merely obeyed
orders, like the horses, and crammed their stomachs till the dishes
were empty. Yes, and made strange music of evenings. She never
understood that.

Then Adrian and her father were alone.

The men swarming through the lower lacework of the trestle were keying
up with sledge and rope and wrench, adding a pole here and there.
These they lifted by means of rope and pulley attached to convenient
parts of the existing structure. Her father was pointing upward. A
bohunk climbed clumsily to the point indicated and tied a pulley there.
Passing a rope through the pulley, he tossed the end down. Several men
seized it. To the other end a log was attached.

Down below, Torrance watched the carrying out of his orders with
keenest interest. He had been at this for months, and his trained eye
could pick out the weak spots with unerring instinct. To his eye he
was forced to trust for the support of those twin bands of steel high
above his head, since th