Max glanced down between the loose boards on the landing.

“I don’t know,” he said slowly; “I don’t believe she could climb up here very well.”

“She won’t have to.  I’m going to put in a passenger elevator, and carry her up as grand as the Palmer House.  You put in your odd minutes between now and three o’clock making a box that’s big and strong enough.”

Max grinned.

“Say, that’s all right.  She’ll like that.  I can do most of it at noon.”

Bannon nodded and went on up the ladders.  At the distributing floor he looked about for a long timber, and had the laborers lay it across the well opening.  The ladders and landings occupied only about a third of the space; the rest was open, a clear drop of eighty feet.

At noon he found Max in an open space behind the office, screwing iron rings into the corners of a stout box.  Max glanced up and laughed.

“I made Hilda promise not to come out here,” he said.  He waved his hand toward the back wall of the office.  Bannon saw that he had nailed strips over the larger cracks and knot holes.  “She was peeking, but I shut that off before I’d got very far along.  I don’t think she saw what it was.  I only had part of the frame done.”

“She’ll be coming out in a minute,” said Bannon.

“I know.  I thought of that.”  Max threw an armful of burlap sacking over the box.  “That’ll cover it up enough.  I guess it’s time to quit, anyway, if I’m going to get any dinner.  There’s a little square of carpet up to the house that I’m going to get for the bottom, and we can run pieces of half-inch rope from the rings up to a hook, and sling it right on the hoist.”

“It’s not going on the hoist,” said Bannon.  “I wouldn’t stop the timbers for Mr. MacBride himself.  When you go back, you’ll see a timber on the top of the well.  I’d like you to sling a block under it and run an inch-and-a-quarter rope through.  We’ll haul it up from below.”

“What power?”

“Man power.”

“All right, Mr. Bannon.  I’ll see to it.  There’s Hilda now.”

He called to her to wait while he got his coat, and then the two disappeared across the tracks.  Hilda had bowed to Bannon, but without the smile and the nod that he liked.  He looked after her as if he would follow; but he changed his mind, and waited a few minutes.

The “elevator” was ready soon after the afternoon’s work had commenced.  Bannon found time between two and three o’clock to inspect the tackle.  He picked up an end of rope and lashed the cross timber down securely.  Then he went down the ladders and found Max, who had brought the carpet for the box and was looking over his work.  The rope led up to the top of the well through a pulley and then back to the working floor and through another pulley, so that the box could be hoisted from below.

“It’s all ready,” said Max.  “It’ll run up as smooth as you want.”