“You’d better go for your sister, then,” Bannon replied.

Max hesitated.

“You meant for me to bring her?”

“Yes, I guess you might as well.”

Bannon stood looking after Max as he walked along the railroad track out into the open air.  Then he glanced up between the smooth walls of cribbing that seemed to draw closer and closer together until they ended, far overhead, in a rectangle of blue sky.  The beam across the top was a black line against the light.  The rope, hanging from it, swayed lazily.  He walked around the box, examining the rings and the four corner ropes, and testing them.

Hilda was laughing when she came with Max along the track.  Bannon could not see her at first for the intervening rows of timbers that supported the bins.  Then she came into view through an opening between two “bents” of timber, beyond a heap of rubbish that had been thrown at one side of the track.  She was trying to walk on the rail, one arm thrown out to balance, the other resting across Max’s shoulders.  Her jacket was buttoned snugly up to the chin, and there was a fresh color in her face.

Bannon had called in three laborers to man the rope; they stood at one side, awaiting the order to haul away.  He found a block of wood, and set it against the box for a step.

“This way, Miss Vogel,” he called.  “The elevator starts in a minute.  You came pretty near being late.”

“Am I going to get in that?” she asked; and she looked up, with a little gasp, along the dwindling rope.

“Here,” said Max, “don’t you say nothing against that elevator.  I call it pretty grand.”

She stood on the block, holding to one of the ropes, and looking alternately into the box and up to the narrow sky above them.

“It’s awfully high,” she said.  “Is that little stick up there all that’s going to hold me up?”

“That little stick is ten-by-twelve,” Max replied.  “It would hold more’n a dozen of you.”

She laughed, but still hesitated.  She lowered her eyes and looked about the great dim space of the working story with its long aisles and its solid masses of timber.  Suddenly she turned to Bannon, who was standing at her side, waiting to give her a hand.

“Oh, Mr. Bannon,” she said, “are you sure it’s strong enough?  It doesn’t look safe.”

“I think it’s safe,” he replied quietly.  He vaulted into the box and signalled to the laborers.  Hilda stepped back off the block as he went up perhaps a third of the way, and then came down.  She said nothing, but stepped on the block.

“How shall I get in?” she asked, laughing a little, but not looking at Bannon.

“Here,” said Bannon, “give us each a hand.  A little jump’ll do it.  Max here’ll go along the ladders and steady you if you swing too much.  Wait a minute, though.”  He hurried out of doors, and returned with a light line, one end of which he made fast to the box, the other he gave to Max.