rty of them obeying
the laws of gravitation from a height of some fifteen to twenty feet,
can be crushed into strange shapes and fragments. For this reason the
loaders are picked and careful men.

At the banking grounds, which lie in and about the bed of the river, the
logs are piled in a gigantic skidway to await the spring freshets, which
will carry them down stream to the "boom." In that enclosure they remain
until sawed in the mill.

Such is the drama of the saw log, a story of grit, resourcefulness,
adaptability, fortitude and ingenuity hard to match. Conditions never
repeat themselves in the woods as they do in the factory. The wilderness
offers ever new complications to solve, difficulties to overcome. A man
must think of everything, figure on everything, from the grand sweep of
the country at large to the pressure on a king-bolt. And where another
possesses the boundless resources of a great city, he has to rely on the
material stored in one corner of a shed. It is easy to build a palace
with men and tools; it is difficult to build a log cabin with nothing
but an ax. His wits must help him where his experience fails; and his
experience must push him mechanically along the track of habit when
successive buffetings have beaten his wits out of his head. In a day
he must construct elaborate engines, roads, and implements which old
civilization considers the works of leisure. Without a thought of
expense he must abandon as temporary, property which other industries
cry out at being compelled to acquire as permanent. For this reason
he becomes in time different from his fellows. The wilderness leaves
something of her mystery in his eyes, that mystery of hidden, unknown
but guessed, power. Men look after him on the street, as they would look
after any other pioneer, in vague admiration of a scope more virile than
their own.

Thorpe, in common with the other men, had thought Radway's vacation at
Christmas time a mistake. He could not but admire the feverish animation
that now characterized the jobber. Every mischance was as quickly
repaired as aroused expedient could do the work.

The marsh received first attention. There the restless snow drifted
uneasily before the wind. Nearly every day the road had to be plowed,
and the sprinklers followed the teams almost constantly. Often it was
bitter cold, but no one dared to suggest to the determined jobber that
it might be better to remain indoors. The men knew as well as