mechanically kept pace with its rolling, treading it in correspondence
now one way, now the other. In a few moments thus he had forced the mass
of logs before him toward an inclined plane leading to the second story
of the mill.

Up this ran an endless chain armed with teeth. The man pushed one of the
logs against the chain; the teeth bit; at once, shaking itself free of
the water, without apparent effort, without haste, calmly and leisurely
as befitted the dignity of its bulk, the great timber arose. The water
dripped from it, the surface streamed, a cheerful _patter, patter_ of
the falling drops made itself heard beneath the mill noises. In a moment
the log disappeared beneath projecting eaves. Another was just behind
it, and behind that yet another, and another, like great patient beasts
rising from the coolness of a stream to follow a leader through the
narrowness, of pasture bars. And in the booms, up the river, as far as
the eye could see, were other logs awaiting their turn. And beyond them
the forest trees, straight and tall and green, dreaming of the time when
they should follow their brothers to the ships and go out into the
world.

Mason was looking up the river.

"I've seen the time when she was piled thirty feet high there, and the
freshet behind her. That was ten year back."

"What?" asked Bob.

"A jam!" explained Mason.

He ducked his head below his shoulders and disappeared beneath the eaves
of the mill. Bob followed.

First it was dusky; then he saw the strip of bright yellow sunlight and
the blue bay in the opening below the eaves; then he caught the glitter
and whirr of the two huge saws, moving silently but with the deadly
menace of great speed on their axes. Against the light in irregular
succession, alternately blotting and clearing the foreground at the end
of the mill, appeared the ends of the logs coming up the incline. For a
moment they poised on the slant, then fell to the level, and glided
forward to a broad platform where they were ravished from the chain and
rolled into line.

Bob's eyes were becoming accustomed to the gloom. He made out pulleys,
belts, machinery, men. While he watched a black, crooked arm shot
vigorously up from the floor, hurried a log to the embrace of two
clamps, rolled it a little this way, a little that, hovered over it as
though in doubt as to whether it was satisfactorily placed, then plunged
to unknown depths as swiftly and silently as it had come. So a