The shadow darted like an arrow over the shifting logs, slanting upstream and towards the shore.  He was half across the fairway now, the pole swung round, the lithe body made a lightning turn, and he was borne downstream at a furious pace.

Suddenly he lost his footing, fell, and disappeared.

“Good God!” cried the men.

“What did I say?”

“I ought never to have let him go!”

The timber crashed and the water roared, the great logs rose and fell and tumbled one over another.  Dark shadows hurried aimlessly hither and thither on the banks.

“Downstream, lads, down!” cried the foreman.

“Ready to give a hand if he’s carried inshore.  Out with the boat, quick!”

Shadows hurrying downstream....

“He’s up again!” came a sudden shout from the farther shore.  All stopped.

And true enough, the daring lumberman was up again, hopping like a bird from one racing log to another as they thrust and elbowed their way down the rapids, rising and falling as in a loom.  Then he settled to the practised lumberman’s easy poise on a log, and steered his way, with lifted pole and carefully balanced body, out of the rapids.

“Well done, well done!”

“Ay, that’s the sort.  More eyes in his feet than many another in his head.”

They crowded thickly round the lad as he stepped ashore.

“What happened?  How did you get up again?”

“’Twas easy enough.  Only the bark broke away under foot, the sticks themselves held fast.  I was up again in a second—­and the last part was worth it all,” said the boy, with a laugh.

“’Twas finely done,” said the foreman.  “But I don’t want to see it done again.  You’ve done enough for to-night—­go off and get a rest, and to-morrow too, if you like.”

“Thanks,” said the young man, looked at his watch with a sly chuckle, and flung down his pole on the grass.

* * * * *

Behind white curtains in a little room lay a young girl.

It was midnight, yet she had not slept.  Something had happened that evening which kept her awake.

Strange—­it was like a story or a dream; she had never heard of such a thing happening to any she knew.  And now—­she had only to shut her eyes, and it was there all over again, to the very life.

She had seen it that way many times already, till it was grown to something like a story.  She had watched it happening, standing by, as it were, a looker-on, watching what passed between the girl there and one other.

She was standing in the front room—­the girl, that is—­pouring the warm milk through a big strainer.

“They’re giving more milk already,” thinks the girl, and laughs.

Then suddenly the door opens, and a crowd of lumbermen come hurrying through the room, going out to their night’s work.  The girl stands with her back turned to them as they pass, answering over her shoulder the jests of the men as they go.