Neither Hilda nor Bannon replied to this, and there was another silence.
"Would you like to walk around and see things closer to?" Bannon asked, turning to Miss Vogel.
"I wouldn't mind. It's rather cold, sitting still."
He led the way along one side of the structure, guiding her carefully in places where the flooring was not yet secure.
"I'm glad you came up," he said. "A good many people think there's nothing in this kind of work but just sawing wood and making money for somebody up in Minneapolis. But it isn't that way. It's pretty, and sometimes it's exciting; and things happen every little while that are interesting enough to tell to anybody, if people only knew it. I'll have you come up a little later, when we get the house built and the machinery coming in. That's when we'll have things really moving. There'll be some fun putting up the belt gallery, too. That'll be over here on the other side."
He turned to lead the way across the floor to the north side of the building. They had stopped a little way from the boom hoist, and she was standing motionless, watching as the boom swung out and the rope rattled to the ground. There was the purring of the engine far below, the straining of the rope, and the creaking of the blocks as the heavy load came slowly up. Gangs of men were waiting to take the timbers the moment they reached the floor. The foreman of the hoist gang was leaning out over the edge, looking down and shouting orders.
Hilda turned with a little start and saw that Bannon was waiting for her. Following him, she picked her way between piles of planks and timber, and between groups of laborers and carpenters, to the other side. Now they could look down at the four tracks of the C. & S. C, the unfinished spouting house on the wharf, and the river.
"Here's where the belt gallery will go," he said, pointing downward: "right over the tracks to the spouting house. They carry the grain on endless belts, you know."
"Doesn't it ever fall off?"
"Not a kernel. It's pretty to watch. When she gets to running we'll come up some day and look at it."