"Christmas!" he exclaimed, in perfectly honest astonishment. "Is to-morrow 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 to-morrow, 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 to-morrow and we have her full of wheat a week from to-day. 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 when the cable comes down?" called the foreman after him as he started away. "She'll hold," said Bannon. CHAPTER XV