nd
the dull boom of the logs as they struck the piers of the bridge or some
building on the shore came rolling to them.

"The dams and booms have burst!" Pierre said. He pointed to the camps
far up the river. By the light of the camp-fires there appeared a wide
weltering flood of logs and debris. Pierre's eyes shifted to the Bridge
House. In one room was a light. He stepped out and down, and the other
followed. They had almost reached the shore, when Pierre cried out
sharply: "What's that?"

He pointed to an indistinct mass bearing down upon the Bridge House. It
was a big shed that had been carried away, and, jammed between timbers,
had not broken up. There was no time for warning. It came on swiftly,
heavily. There was a strange, horrible, grinding sound, and then they
saw the light of that one room move on, waving a little to and fro-on to
the rapids, the cohorts of logs crowding hard after.

Where the light was two men had started to their feet when the crash
came. They felt the House move. "Run-save yourself!" cried the old man
quietly. "We are lost!"

The floor rocked.

"Go," he said again. "I will stay with her."

"She is mine," Brydon said; and he took her in his arms. "I will not
go."

They could hear the rapids below. The old man steadied himself in the
deep water on the floor, and caught out yearningly at the cold hands.

"Come close, come close," said Brydon. "Closer; put your arms round
her."

The old man did so. They were locked in each other's arms--dead and
living.

The old man spoke, with a piteous kind of joy: "We therefore commit her
body to the deep--!"

The three were never found.

THE EPAULETTES

Old Athabasca, chief of the Little Crees, sat at the door of his lodge,
staring down into the valley where Fort Pentecost lay, and Mitawawa
his daughter sat near him, fretfully pulling at the fringe of her fine
buckskin jacket. She had reason to be troubled. Fyles the trader had put
a great indignity upon Athabasca. A factor of twenty years before, in
recognition of the chief's merits and in reward of his services, had
presented him with a pair of epaulettes, left in the Fort by some
officer in Her Majesty's service. A good, solid, honest pair of
epaulettes, well fitted to stand the wear and tear of those high feasts
and functions at which the chief paraded them upon his broad shoulders.
They were the admiration of his own tribe, the wonder of others, the
envy of many chiefs. It was