led over to stand alongside the nearest of the fallen monsters. He
could just see over it comfortably. "My good heavens!" said he soberly,
resuming his seat. "How in blazes do you handle them?"

Welton drove on a few paces, then pointed with his whip. A narrow trough
made of small peeled logs laid parallel and pegged and mortised together
at the ends, ran straight over the next hill.

"That's a chute," he explained briefly. "We hitch a wire cable to the
log and just naturally yank it over to the chute."

"How yank it?" demanded Bob.

"By a good, husky donkey engine. Then the chute poles are slushed, we
hitch cables on four or five logs, and just tow them over the hill to
the mill."

Bob's enthusiasm, as always, was growing with the presentation of this
new and mighty problem of engineering so succinctly presented. It
sounded simple; but from his two years' experience he knew better. He
was becoming accustomed to filling in the outlines of pure theory. At a
glance he realized the importance of such things as adequate anchors for
the donkey engines; of figuring on straight pulls, horse power and the
breaking strain of steel cables; of arranging curves in such manner as
to obviate ditching the logs, of selecting grades and routes in such
wise as to avoid the lift of the stretched cable; and more dimly he
guessed at other accidents, problems and necessities which only the
emergency could fully disclose. All he said was:

"So that's why you bark them all--so they'll slide. I wondered."

But now the ponies, who had often made this same trip, pricked up their
ears and accelerated their pace. In a moment they had rounded a hill and
brought their masters into full view of the mill itself.

The site was in a wide, natural clearing occupied originally by a green
meadow perhaps a dozen acres in extent. From the borders of this park
the forest had drawn back to a dark fringe. Now among the trees at the
upper end gleamed the yellow of new, unpainted shanties. Square against
the prospect was the mill, a huge structure, built of axe-hewn timbers,
rough boards, and the hand-rived shingles known as shakes. Piece by
piece the machinery had been hauled up the mountain road until enough
had been assembled on the space provided for it by the axe men to begin
sawing. Then, like some strange monster, it had eaten out for itself at
once a space in the forest and the materials for its shell and for the
construction of its lesser dependen