“Nice, isn’t it?” Bannon commented.  “Now read the postscript, Miss Vogel.”  It was in Porter’s handwriting, and Hilda read it slowly.  “MacBride & Company are not, however, allowed to erect trestles or temporary scaffolding in the C. & S. C. right-of-way, nor to remove any property of the Company, such as fences, nor to do anything which may, in the opinion of the local authorities, hinder the movement of trains.”

Pete’s face went blank.  “A lot of good this darned permit does us then.  That just means we can’t build it.”

Bannon nodded.  “That’s what it’s supposed to mean,” he said.  “That’s just the point.”

“You see, it’s like this,” he went on.  “That man Porter would make the finest material for ring-oiling, dust proof, non-inflammable bearings that I ever saw.  He’s just about the hardest, smoothest, shiniest, coolest little piece of metal that ever came my way.  Well, he wants to delay us on this job.  I took that in the moment I saw him.  Well, I told him how we went ahead, just banking on his verbal consent, and how his railroad had jumped on us; and I said I was sure it was just a misunderstanding, but I wanted it cleared up because we was in a hurry.  He grinned a little over that, and I went on talking.  Said we’d bother ’em as little as possible; of course we had to put up the trestles in their property, because we couldn’t hold the thing up with a balloon.

“He asked me, innocent as you please, if a steel bridge couldn’t be made in a single span, and I said, yes, but it would take too long.  We only had a few days.  ‘Well,’ he says, ‘Mr. Bannon, I’ll give you a permit.’  And that’s what he gave me.  I bet he’s grinning yet.  I wonder if he’ll grin so much about three days from now.”

“Do you mean that you can build it anyway?” Hilda demanded breathlessly.

He nodded, and, turning to Pete, plunged into a swift, technical explanation of how the trick was to be done.  “Won’t you please tell me, too?” Hilda asked appealingly.

“Sure,” he said.  He sat down beside her at the desk and began drawing on a piece of paper.  Pete came and looked over his shoulder.  Bannon began his explanation.

Illustration:  ["Here’s the spouting house”]

“Here’s the spouting house, and here’s the elevator.  Now, suppose they were only fifteen feet apart.  Then if we had two ten-foot sticks and put ’em up at an angle and fastened the floor to a bolt that came down between ’em, the whole weight of the thing would be passed along to the foundation that the ends of the timbers rest on.  But you see, it’s got to be one hundred and fifty feet long, and to build it that way would take two one hundred-foot timbers, and we haven’t got ’em that long.

Illustration:  [He was drawing lines across the timber]

“But we’ve got plenty of sticks that are twenty feet long, and plenty of bolts, and this is the way we arrange ’em.  We put up our first stick (x) at an angle just as before.  Then we let a bolt (o) down through the upper end of it and through the floor of the gallery.  Now the next timber (y) we put up at just the same angle as the first, with the foot of it bearing down on the lower end of the bolt.