noon
As Max went over the job with his time-book next morning , he said it to every man he met , and they all believed him . Peterson , the same man and not the same man either , who had once vowed that there would n't be any night work on Calumet K , who had bent a pair of most unwilling shoulders to the work Bannon had put upon them , who had once spent long , sulky afternoons in the barren little room of his new boarding-house ; Peterson held himself down in bed exactly three hours the morning after that famous victory . Before eleven o'clock he was sledging down a tottering timber at the summit of the marine tower , a hundred and forty feet sheer above the wharf . Just before noon he came into the office and found Hilda there alone . He had stopped outside the door to put on his coat , but had not buttoned it ; his shirt , wet as though he had been in the lake , clung to him and revealed the outline of every muscle in his great trunk . He flung his hat on the draughting-table , and his yellow hair seemed crisper and curlier than ever before . `` Well , it looks as though we was all right , '' he said .