CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY and CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY, Jr. Author and Clergyman Civil Engineer Copyright by Fleming H. Rev ell Co. THE FAMOUS ENGINEER LEARNS THAT HE MADE THE BIG MISTAKE OF HIS LIFE AND MANY LIVES MUST PAY THE PENALTY. '1!: Manl- ! <’• - rii' i"ii company is putting up a groat interna ti-u.. ; !.i|>luimnl l*> Bertram Meade, Sr., famous engineer. His Ir .. n Milent ' ineer at the bridge, loves Helen III » .rtii. ■ i . tighter of Colonel Illingworth, head of the construction . ; .. ! •!.. v uill :: :;rr> a* -O" i ns the bridge is completed. Tile young i r «jm •■ti.'n.s! his father's judgment on the strength of certs* * ju.jM>rt:int girders but was laughed at. His doubts are veri fied alien tie- bridge suddenly collapses, with heavy loss of life. CHAPTER VI. The Failure. In spite of buu>e!f ami hi* «»nM«ire la ih«- bridge Al Urtt felt n llule un teqr tbr ihai moniiug. Al Ixittom bo K»ii itji»rr re*|*ect for Mridr'i tech nical ktum Inljo than he ha*! displayed or nm admitted to hlmm'lf. The foviiCH' rtisiiioor'* torritinl alarm, his Ittrf forgetfulm—s <>f tin* amenities be t«tvo theta, hi« frantic hut futile ef forts to telephone, of which the op erator told Abbott In the morning. his harried dei«arture to New York, were, to aajr the least, somewhat disquieting, much more so than he was fain to ad mit to himself. Although it iuvolved n hard and •usrsbit dangifou* cittnh downward and took upward* of a half hour of his valuable time, the first thing the erecp * n.f mpnwr did iu the mornitig was to fo down to the |der head ami make a thorough and careful examination of the huekU-d nietuleT. was. of Course, a |*art of the great lower chord Of the huge dlamoud-Khu{>ed truss, which, with it* parallel sixty feet away Mi the other *-i*!e of the bridge and its two opl•**s-bt• ,-s aero** the river, stipport Od the whole structure. If anything were wrong, seriously. irr«-parahly wrong with the member and It gave way. the whole truss would go. The other truss would inevitably follow cult, ami ibe cantilever would immedi ately oaUapse. Ai.lM.rt realized that. 9f course as he ciiml*ed carefully down to the pier head and stood on tlie Aw AM-' ', as he by the member sad aprveyed it throughout its length could *41 y see that It had buckled. ai tbou-!t :h> deviation vvn*> slight, about two Inches at its maximum in sixty feet- lie brought with him a line and. with infinite care and pains. he drew It taut wcraaa the slight concavity like a bow-«triug. He had estimated the Camber. or the distance between the Center of the bow and the string, at one and a half Indies. As he made careful neaanrementa. he discov that It was slightly over one and three-quarter inches. In seven hun dred and twenty that was scarcely no ticeable. am! It did not seem very me'-h to Abbott. As he strswl there feeling himself a.i Insignificant figure amid this great Interwoven mass of ■tael again the sense of Its strength and stability came to him overpowering |y, ao ruu< h so that he laughed aloud In a rather grim fashion at the un ■rooted nervousness which had been tado>ed in hts mind by Meade's words •nd action*. Bet be was a conscientious man. so he pursued his Inve-tigations further. He Hlmlted up on top of the mem tier, which was easy enough by means of the crian-crossed lacing, and carefully Inspected the lacings at the center of the eoocarlty. or sidewise spring from the right line. He noticed, by getting down on his face and surveying the lu<-lng burs Closely, a numtier of fine hair-line crack* m the paint, surface traceries apparently, running here and there from the rivet holes. The rivets them arives had rather a strained look. Some of the outer rivets seemed slightly loose, where before they must have been tight, for the members, like all other parts of the bridge, had been carefully inspected at the shop and at looseness of the rivets would cer tali bare been noticed there. Hut Abl» , nhses-iou as to the strength of ! • bridge had grown stronger. Llu Ing i? twt. erav. iing over it. feeling its rigS'iity. he i!'.that these evident ■train- were to be eX)-ecteorted that it was all right, which 1 was what he expected, of course, and 'his also added to Abbott’s confidence. The day was an unusually hard one. A great quantity of structural steel that had been delayed and which had threatened to hold up the work, arrived that day and the chief of construction ' was liusi. r than he had ever been. He was driving the men with furious energy. Even under the best conditions i it would he well-nigh impossible to | complete the bridge on time. Abbott ! had pride in carrying out the contract and the financial question was a con | sblerable one. Had it not been for i that, perhaps, he would liave paid more attention to Meade's appeal. So he ' hurried on the work at top speed. l.nte in the afternoon, without say ing anythin*; to Wllehings, who had re ~utned Ids regular w ork, or to anybody in fact. Abbott went down to look at the member again. He climbed down a hundred feet or more to make an other examination at the expense of 1 much vnluatile time, for he had not passed so busy a day as that one since the bridge begun. Everything was ex actly as it had been. Those hair-line cracks had troubled him a little despite Wib hing's remark. He studied them a second time. They were just as they had fieen, so far as he could tell, no larger, no more numerous. The lacings rang exactly the same under his ham mer. He climbed hack to the floor of the bridge and sjient the next half hour in specting the progress of the work. The suspended span had nlreudy been pushed out far beyond the end of the cantilever. The work on the other side of the river had been stopped. As soon as they got the suspended span halfway over they would transfer the workmen and finish tin- opposite canti lever. Abbott calculated that perhaps in another week they could get it out if he drove the men. He looked at his watch, grudgingly observing that it was almost five o'clock. The men were nothing to Abbott. The bridge was everything. That is not to say he was heartless, hut the bridge and its erec tion were supreme in his mind. Tlie material was arriving and every thing was going on with such a swing and vigor that he would fain have kept them at work an hour or two longer. The men themselves did not feel that way. Some of the employees of the higher grades had got the obsession of the bridge, hut to most of them it was the thing they worked at, by which they gnt their daily bread—nothing more. Those who worked by tire day were already laying aside their tools, and preparing for their departure. They He Made Another Careful Examina tion. always would get ready so that at the signal all that was left to do was to stop. The riveters, who were paid by the piece, kept at it always to the very last minute. Abbott had been standing near the outer end of the cantilever and he turned and walked toward the bank. The pneumatic riveters were rat-tat tatting on the rivet heads with a per fectly damnable iteration of insistent sound. A confused babel of voices, the clatter of hummers, ringing sounds of I swinging steel grating against steel, 1 clanking of trucks, grinding of wheels, ihe deep breathing of locomotives, I mingled in an unliarmonious diapason I of horrid sound. Abbott was right above the pier head now. He looked down at it through ! the struts and floor beams and braces, fastening his gaze on the questioned member. There it stood satisfactorily, of course. Vet, something impelled him to walk out on the nearest floor beam 1 to the extreme edge of the truss and look down at it once more, leaning far out to see it better. He could get a better view of it with nothing between it and him. It still stood bravely. It was all right, of course. He wished that he had never said a word about it to anyone. He did not see why he could not regard it with the indifference that it merited. As he stared down at it over the edge of the truss the whistle lor quitting blew. Every sound of work ceased after the briefest of intervals, except here and there a few riveters driving home a final rivet kept at it for a few sec ond. but only for a few seconds. Then, | for a moment a silence like death it I self intervened. It seemed ns if the ever blowing wind had been momen | tarily stilled. That shrill whistle and the consequent cessation of the work j always affected everybody the same | way. There was inevitably and in variably a pause. The contrast be tween the noise and Its sudden stop page was so great that the men in ! stinetively waited a few seconds and ! drew a breath before they began to | light their pipes, close their tool boxes, i pick up their coats and dinner pails, and resume their conversation ns they strolled along the roadway to the shore. It seemed to Abbott that it had never been so silent oi\ the bridge before. There was almost always a breeze, sometimes a gale, blowing down or up the gorge through which the river flowed, but that afternoon not a breath was stirring. Abbott found himself waiting in strained and unwonted suspense for the next second or two, his eyes fixed on the member. The long warm rays of the afternoon sun illuminated it clearly. In that second immediately below him. far down toward the pier head he saw a sudden flash as of break ing steel. Low, but clear enough in the intense silence, he heard a popping sound like the snap of a great finger. Then the bright gleam of freshly broken metal caught his excited glance. The lacing was giving way. Meade was right. Tlie member would go with it— The first pop or two was succeeded by a little rattle as of revolver shots heard from a distance, as the lacings gave way in quick succession. Abbott was a man with a powerful voice and he raised it to its limit. The idle workmen, just beginning to laugh nnd jest, heard a great cry: “Off the bridge, for God's sake!” Two or three, among them Wileh ings, who happened to be within a few feet of the landward end, without un derstanding why, but impelled by the agony, the appeal, the horror in the great shout of the master builder, leaped for the shore. On the bridge itself some stepped forward, some stood still staring, others peered down ward. The great sixty-foot webs of steel wavered like ribbons in the wind. The bridge shook as if in an earth quake. Tltere was a heavy, shuddering, swaying movement nnd then the (300 foot cantilever arm plunged down ward. as a great ship falls into the trough of a mighty sen. Simrp-keyed sounds cracked out overhead ns the truss parted at the apex, the outward half inclining to the water, the inward half sinking straight down. Shouts, oaths, screams rose, heard faintly above the mighty bell-like re quiem of great girders, struts and ties smiting other members and ringing in the ears of the helpless men like doom. Then, with a fearful crash, with a mighty shiver, the landward hiftf col lapsed on the low shore, like a house of cards upon which has been laid the weight of a massive hand. The river section, carrying the greater load at tlie top and torn from its base, plunged, like an avalanche of steel, 200 feet down into the river, throwing far ahead of it, ns from a giant catapult, the traveler on the outward end of the suspended span and a locomotive on tlie floor beneath. \Y ilchings. and the few men safe on the shore, stood trembling, looking at the hare pier head, at the awful tan gled mass of wreckage on the shore between the pier and the bank; floor beam and stringer, girder and strut, bent, twisted, broken in ragged and horrible ruin, while the water, deeper than the chasm it had cut, rolled its waves smoothly over the agitations of the great plunge beyond the pier. They stared sick and faint at the tangled, interwoven mass of steel, ribboning in every direction—for in the main the rivets held so it was not nny defect of Joints, but structural weakness In 'he body of the members that had brought tt down—and inclosing as In a net many bodies that a few seconds >efore had been living men. They had seen body after body hurled ‘‘ou? 1 V e air fro,u the outward end and. as hey gazed foarfo„ , , here and there dark . ‘ , the surface of the water ^h®oated *° glimpses of white, dead faces mighty current rolled them under swept them on. And no sound eam« from the hundred and fifty who had gone down with the bridge. The 200 foot fall would have killed them with out the smashing and battering and crashing of the great girders that had fallen upon them or driven them from the floor and hurled them, crushed and broken, into the river. Meade hns reefer. It would give him the means of >■ lvti.. a large part of the financial difficulty that often hampers him in his work and make him more independent and efficient. Certain hours in the daj or so many hours a week, should be set apart and prescribed as a time f.>r his agricultural duties. This would benefit him physicaily-as well as aid g him to make both ends meet." You cannot fan away a fog. Scientific facts prove the drug, caffeine, in coffee is harmful to many, while the pure food-drink— POSTUM is not only free from drugs, but is economical, delicious and nourishing. Made of wheat and a bit of wholesome mo lasses, Postum is highly recommended by phy sicians for those with whom coffee disagrees. Postum is especially suitable for children. “There’s a Reason” Sc Id by Grocer*.