chiefly important that all the logs of the winter's chopping
should be got out.

On a single log, at a most daunting distance from either shore, came
voyaging a lonely and bedraggled little traveller. This particular red
squirrel had been chattering gaily in the top of an old tree on the
river-bank, when misfortune took him unawares. The tree was on a bluff
just where a small but very turbulent and overswollen stream flowed in.
The flood had stealthily undermined the bluff. Suddenly the squirrel had
felt the tree sway ominously beneath him. He had leaped for safety, but
too late! The whole bank had melted into the current. By great luck, the
squirrel had managed to swim to a passing log. Breathless and all but
drowned, he had clambered upon it. Before he could recover his wits
enough to make a venture for shore, the vehement lesser stream had swept
his log clean out into mid-channel. Though a bold enough swimmer, he had
seen that he could not face that boiling tide with any hope of success;
so he had clung to his unstable refuge and waited upon fate.

For perhaps an hour the squirrel journeyed thus without incident or
further adventure. Then, in a wide, comparatively sluggish reach of the
river, some whimsical cross-current had borne his log over to the
neighbourhood of a whole, voyaging fleet of brown timbers. Unable to see
how far this group extended, the squirrel inferred that it might
possibly afford him passage to the shore. With a tremendous leap he
gained the nearest of the timber. Thence he went skipping joyously, now
up river and now down, skirting wide spaces of clear water, and twice
swimming open lanes too broad to jump, till he was not more than a
hundred yards from the line of trees that marked the flooded bank. Some
thirty feet beyond, and that much nearer safety, one more log floated
alone. The plucky little animal jumped as far as he could, landed with a
splash, and swam vigorously for this last log. He gained it, and was
just dragging himself out upon it, when there was a rush and heavy break
in the water, and a pair of big jaws snapped close behind him. An
agonized spring saved him, and he clung flat, quivering, on the top of
the log. But the hungry pickerel had captured nearly half his tail.

[Illustration: "THE PLUCKY LITTLE ANIMAL JUMPED AS FAR AS HE COULD."]

A minute or two later he had recovered from this shock; and thereupon
he sat up and chattered shrill indignation, twitching defiantly the