s axe brilliantly, and soon
forgot his indignation against Laurette. At length he attacked the
centre pile, the key to the whole structure.

Everybody, at this point, held his breath. Loud sounded the measured
axe-strokes over the rush of the swollen river. No one moved but Reddin,
and no one but Laurette noticed his movement. His skilled eye had
detected a danger which none of the rest perceived. He drew close to the
brow, and moved a little way down the bank.

"What can he be up to?" wondered Laurette; and then she sniffed angrily
because she had thought about him at all.

Goodine dealt a few cautious strokes upon the central pile, paused a
moment or two to reconnoitre, and then renewed his attack. Reddin became
very fidgety. He watched the logs, and shouted earnestly,--

"Better come out o' that right now and finish on this 'ere nigh pile."

Goodine looked up, eyed first his adviser, then very narrowly the logs,
and answered, tersely, "Go to h--ll!"

"That's just like the both of 'em," muttered McElvey, as Goodine turned
and resumed his chopping.

At this moment there came a sullen, tearing sound; and the top of the
near pile, which had been half cut through, began to lean slowly,
slowly. A yell of desperate warning arose. Goodine dropped his axe,
turned like lightning, and made a tremendous leap for safety. He gained
the edge of the landing-front, slipped on an oozy stone, and fell back
with a cry of horror right beneath the toppling mass of logs.

As his cry re-echoed from every throat, Jim Reddin dropped beside him as
swiftly and almost miraculously as a sparrow-hawk flashes upon its prey.
With a terrific surge he swung Goodine backward and outward into the
raging current, but away from the face of the impending avalanche. Then,
as the logs all went with a gathering roar, he himself sprang outward in
a superb leap, splashed mightily into the stream, disappeared, and came
up some yards below. Side by side the two men struck out sturdily for
shore, and in a couple of minutes their comrades' eager hands were
dragging them up the bank.

"Didn't I _tell_ you Jim Reddin wasn't no coward?" said McElvey, with
glistening eyes, to Laurette; and Laurette, having no other way to
relieve her excitement and give vent to her revulsion of feelings, sat
down on a sled and cried most illogically.

As the two dripping men approached the camp, she looked up to see a
reconciliation. Presently Goodine emerged from a little k