d toward the woods.

"Whar yer goin', sis?" called Gillsey, in a startled voice.

"Warn 'em!" said the girl, laconically, not stopping her pace.

"Stop! stop! Come back!" shouted her father, starting in pursuit. But
the girl never paused.

"Blame the'r skins! Blame the'r skins!" murmured Gillsey to himself.
Then, seeing that he was not gaining on the child, he seemed to gulp
something down in his throat, and finally he shouted:--

"_I'll_ go, sis, _honest_ I'll go. Yer kaint do it yerself. Come back
home!"

The girl stopped, turned round, and walked back, saying to her father,
"They've kep' us the winter. Yer _must_ git thar in time, dad!"

Gillsey went by the child, at a long trot, without answering, and
disappeared in the woods; and at the same moment the flood went through
the valley, filling it half-way up to the spot where the cabin stood.

That lanky youngster's word was law to the father, and she had set his
thoughts in a new channel. He felt the camp must be saved, if he died
for it. The girl said so. He only remembered now how easily the men had
let him off, when they might have half-killed him; and their jests and
jeers and tormentings he forgot. His loose-hung frame gave him a long
stride, and his endurance was marvellous. Through the gray and silver
glades, over stumps and windfalls, through thickets and black valleys
and treacherous swamps, he went leaping at almost full speed.

Before long the tremendous effort began to tell. At first he would not
yield; but presently he realized that he was in danger of giving out, so
he slackened speed a little, in order to save his powers. But as he came
out upon the valley and neared the camp, he caught once more a whisper
of the flood, and sprang forward desperately. Could he get there in
time? The child had said he _must_. He _would_.

His mouth was dry as a board, and he gasped painfully for breath, as he
stumbled against the camp-door; and the roar of the flood was in his
ears. Unable to speak at first, he battered furiously on the door with
an axe, and then smashed in the window.

As the men came jumping wrathfully from their bunks, he found voice to
yell:--

"The water! Dam broke! Run! Run!"

But the noise of the onrushing flood was now in their startled ears, and
they needed no words to tell them their awful peril. Not staying an
instant, every man ran for the hillside, barefooted in the snow. Ere
they reached a safe height, Gillsey stumbled and f