tray in his hand for at least four minutes. Then he spoke.

"Boys," he said, "I'll be darned if I close down till I'm ready to
close down. I've got an idee. You wait and I'll show you."

And beyond that, not another word did Mr. Smith say on the subject.

But within forty-eight hours the whole town knew that something was
doing. The hotel swarmed with carpenters, bricklayers and painters.
There was an architect up from the city with a bundle of blue prints
in his hand. There was an engineer taking the street level with a
theodolite, and a gang of navvies with shovels digging like fury as
if to dig out the back foundations of the hotel.

"That'll fool 'em," said Mr. Smith.

Half the town was gathered round the hotel crazy with excitement. But
not a word would the proprietor say. Great dray loads of square
timber, and two-by-eight pine joists kept arriving from the planing
mill. There was a pile of matched spruce sixteen feet high lying by
the sidewalk.

Then the excavation deepened and the dirt flew, and the beams went up
and the joists across, and all the day from dawn till dusk the
hammers of the carpenters clattered away, working overtime at time
and a half.

"It don't matter what it costs," said Mr. Smith; "get it done."

Rapidly the structure took form. It extended down the side street,