th infinite caution out over the
channel. I felt every inch of that log, but once a dead branch snapped
short in my hand, and the noise rang sharp as a pistol shot. I waited,
flattening myself to the bole, but the thunder of the river must have
drowned the sound; the Indians did not stir. So at last I came to the
danger point. Groping for the break, I found it started underneath,
reaching well around. Caused probably by some battering bulk in the spring
floods, and widening slowly ever since, it needed only a slight shock to
bring it to a finish. I grasped a stout snag and tried to swing myself
over the place, but there came a splitting report; and there was just time
to drop astride above that stub of limb, when the log parted below it, and
I was in the river. I managed to keep my hold and my head out of water,
though the current did its best to suck me under. Then I saw that while
the main portion of the tree had been swept away, the top to which I clung
remained fixed to the bank, wedged no doubt between trunks or boulders. As
I began to draw myself up out of the wash, a resinous bough thrown on the
fire warned me the Indians were roused, and I flattened again like a
chameleon on the slippery incline. They came as far as the rill and stood
looking across, then went down-stream, no doubt to see whether the trunk
had stranded on the riffles below the cataract. But they were back before
I could finish the log, and the rising moon illuminated the gorge. I was
forced to swing to the shady side of the snag. The time dragged endlessly;
a wind piping down the watercourse cut like a hundred whips through my wet
clothes; and I think in the end I only kept my hold because my fingers
were too stiff to let go. But at last the Indians stretched themselves
once more on the ground; their fire burned low, and I wormed myself up
within reach of a friendly young hemlock, grasped a bough, and gained
shelving rock. The next moment I relaxed, all but done for, on a dry bed
of needles."

Tisdale paused, looking again from face to face, while the humor gleamed
in his own. "I am making a long story of it," he said modestly. "You must
be tired!"

"Tired!" exclaimed Elizabeth, "It's the very best story I ever heard.
Please go on."

"Of course you escaped," supplemented Marcia Feversham, "but we want to
know how. And what was your chum doing all the time? And wasn't there
another woman?"

Frederic Morganstein rumbled a short laugh. "Maybe y