back to your job."

"Yes," agreed Junko helplessly. In the momentary slack tide of work,
the giant had conceived the idea of searching out the driver crew for
purposes of pugilistic vengeance. Thorpe's suspicions stung him, but his
simple mind could see no direct way to explanation.

All night long in the chill of a spring rain and windstorm the Fighting
Forty and certain of the mill crew gave themselves to the labor of
connecting the slanting stone cribs so strongly, by means of heavy
timbers chained end to end, that the pressure of a break in the jam
might not sweep aside the defenses. Wallace Carpenter, Shorty, the
chore-boy, and Anderson, the barn-boss, picked a dangerous passage
back and forth carrying pails of red-hot coffee which Mrs. Hathaway
constantly prepared. The cold water numbed the men's hands. With
difficulty could they manipulate the heavy chains through the auger
holes; with pain they twisted knots, bored holes. They did not complain.
Behind them the jam quivered, perilously near the bursting point. From
it shrieked aloud the demons of pressure. Steadily the river rose, an
inch an hour. The key might snap at any given moment, they could not
tell,--and with the rush they knew very well that themselves, the tug,
and the disabled piledriver would be swept from existence. The worst of
it was that the blackness shrouded their experience into uselessness;
they were utterly unable to tell by the ordinary visual symptoms how
near the jam might be to collapse.

However, they persisted, as the old-time riverman always does, so that
when dawn appeared the barrier was continuous and assured. Although the
pressure of the river had already forced the logs against the defenses,
the latter held the strain well.

The storm had settled into its gait. Overhead the sky was filled with
gray, beneath which darker scuds flew across the zenith before a howling
southwest wind. Out in the clear river one could hardly stand upright
against the gusts. In the fan of many directions furious squalls swept
over the open water below the booms, and an eager boiling current rushed
to the lake.

Thorpe now gave orders that the tug and driver should take shelter. A
few moments later he expressed himself as satisfied. The dripping crew,
their harsh faces gray in the half-light, picked their way to the shore.

In the darkness of that long night's work no man knew his neighbor. Men
from the river, men from the mill, men from the yard a