ather to
a dark umber-brown. In another moment I looked down on the jam.

The breast, as my landlord had told me, rose sheer from the water to the
height of at least twenty-five feet, bristling and formidable. Back of
it pressed the volume of logs packed closely in an apparently
inextricable tangle as far as the eye could reach. A man near informed
me that the tail was a good three miles up stream. From beneath this
wonderful _chevaux de frise_ foamed the current of the river,
irresistible to any force less mighty than the statics of such a mass.

A crew of forty or fifty men were at work. They clamped their peavies to
the reluctant timbers, heaved, pushed, slid, and rolled them one by one
into the current, where they were caught and borne away. They had been
doing this for a week. As yet their efforts had made but slight
impression on the bulk of the jam, but some time, with patience, they
would reach the key-logs. Then the tangle would melt like sugar in the
freshet, and these imperturbable workers would have to escape suddenly
over the plunging logs to shore.

My eye ranged over the men, and finally rested on Dickey Darrell. He was
standing on the slanting end of an upheaved log dominating the scene.
His little triangular face with the accents of the quadrilateral
eyebrows was pale with the blaze of his energy, and his chipmunk eyes
seemed to flame with a dynamic vehemence that caused those on whom their
glance fell to jump as though they had been touched with a hot poker. I
had heard more of Dickey Darrell since my last visit, and was glad of
the chance to observe Morrison & Daly's best "driver" at work.

The jam seemed on the very edge of breaking. After half an hour's
strained expectation it seemed still on the very edge of breaking. So I
sat down on a stump. Then for the first time I noticed another
acquaintance, handling his peavie near the very person of the rear boss.

"Hullo," said I to myself, "that's funny. I wonder if Jimmy Powers got
even; and if so, why he is working so amicably and so near Roaring
Dick."

At noon the men came ashore for dinner. I paid a quarter into the cook's
private exchequer and so was fed. After the meal I approached my
acquaintance of the year before.

"Hello, Powers," I greeted him, "I suppose you don't remember me?"

"Sure," he responded heartily. "Ain't you a little early this year?"

"No," I disclaimed, "this is a better sight than a birling match."

I offered him a