"Barney! Barney!" screamed his contingent reproachfully.

"Well done, Rory! Keep at it! You've got them beaten!"

"Beaten, indeed!" was the scornful reply. "Just wait a minute."

"They're at the 'purlines'!" shrieked Rory's sister, and her friends,
proceeding to scream wildly after the female method of expressing
emotion under such circumstances.

"My!" sniffed a contemptuous member of Barney's faction, suffering
unutterable pangs of humiliation. "Some people don't mind making a show
of themselves."

"Oh, Barney! why don't you hurry?" cried Margaret, to whose eager spirit
Barney's movements seemed painfully and almost wilfully slow.

But Barney had laid his plans. Dividing his men into squads, he had been
carrying out the policy of simultaneous preparation, and while part of
his men had been getting the plates to their places, others had been
making ready the "purlines" and laying the rafters in order so that,
although beaten by Rory in the initial stages of the struggle, when once
his plates were in position, while Rory's men were rushing about in
more or less confusion after their rafters, Barney's purlins and rafters
moved to their positions as if by magic. Consequently, though when they
arrived at the rafters Barney was half a dozen behind, the rest of his
rafters were lifted almost as one into their places.

At once the ranks of Barney's faction, which up to this point had been
enduring the poignant pangs of what looked like humiliating defeat,