or it might get loose at
any moment, swing wide open, and set free the imprisoned wealth of logs
behind it. As it was, they were beginning to slip through the narrow
opening, and those that had attracted Winn's attention were sliding
downstream as stealthily as so many escaped convicts.

The boy's first impulse was to run towards the house, calling his
father and the mill-hands as he went. His second, and the one upon
which he acted, was to mend the broken boom and capture the truant logs
himself. "There is no need of troubling father, and I can do it alone
better than any number of those clumsy mill-hands," he thought.
"Besides, there is no time to spare; for if the boom once lets go of
that snag, we shall lose half the logs behind it."

Thus thinking, Winn ran around the mill and sprang aboard the raft that
lay just below it. Glancing about for a stout rope, his eye lighted on
the line by which the raft was made fast to a tree. "The very thing!"
he exclaimed. "While it's aground here the raft doesn't need a cable
any more than I need a check-rein, and I told father so. He said there
wasn't any harm in taking a precaution, and that the water might rise
unexpectedly. As if there was a chance of it! There hasn't been any
rain for two months, and isn't likely to be any for another yet to
come."

While these thoughts were spinning through the boy's brain, he was
casting loose the cable at both ends and stowing it in his own little
dugout that was moored to the outer side of the raft. Then with strong
deep strokes he paddled swiftly upstream towards the broken boom.
After fifteen minutes of hard work he had secured one end of the cable
to that part of the boom resting against the snag, carried the other to
and around a tree on the bank, back again to the boom, and then to the
inshore end of the broken chain. Thus he not only secured the boom
against opening any wider, but closed the exit already made.

[Illustration: "Winn secured one end of the cable to that part of the
boom resting against the snag."]

"That's as good a job as any of them could have done," he remarked to
himself, regarding his work through the gathering gloom with great
satisfaction. "Now for the fellows that got away."

It was a much harder task to capture and tow back those three truant
logs than it had been to repair the boom. It was such hard work, and
the darkness added so much to its difficulties, that almost any other
boy would