Either General Barton's practiced eye forestalled any need of the instrument, or Carleton had already fully posted him as to which side of the circle was some inches too high, for he asked, with some severity:--
"Isn't the top of that concrete base out of level, Mr. Sanford?"
"Yes, sir; some inches too high near the southeast derrick," replied Sanford promptly.
"I should prefer you to ask the superintendent," said Sanford quietly.
Mrs. Leroy, who was standing a short distance away on a dry plank that Sanford had put under her feet, her ears alert, stopped talking to Smearly and turned her head. She did not want to miss a word.
"What have you to say, Mr. Carleton? Did you give any orders to raise that level?" The general looked over his glasses at the superintendent.
Carleton had evidently prepared himself for this ordeal, and had carefully studied his line of answers. As long as he kept the written requirements under the contract he was safe.
"If I understand my instructions, sir, I am not here to give orders. The plans show what is to be done." He spoke in a low, almost gentle voice, and with a certain deference of manner which no one had ever seen in him before, and which Sanford felt was even more to be dreaded than his customary bluster.
Captain Joe stepped closer to Sanford's side, and Caleb and Captain Bob Brandt, who stood on the outside of the circle of officers grouped around the tripod, leaned forward, listening intently. They, too, had noticed the change in Carleton's manner. The other men dropped their shovels and tools, and edged up, not obtrusively, but so as to overhear everything.
"Is this the reason you have withheld the certificate, of which the contractor complains?" asked the general, with a tone in his voice as of a judge interrogating a witness.
Carleton bowed his head meekly in assent. "I can't sign for work that 's done wrong, sir."
Captain Joe made a movement as if to speak, when Sanford, checking him with a look, began, "The superintendent is right so far as he goes, general, but there is another clause in the contract which he seems to forget. I'll quote it," drawing an important-looking document from his pocket and spreading it out on the top of a cement barrel: "'Any dispute arising between the United States engineer, or his superintendent, and the contractor, shall be decided by the former, and his decision shall be final.' If the level of this concrete base does not conform to the plans, there is no one to blame but the superintendent himself."