ten his bed.
But we'd not change our life so free
For all the farmer's gold,
Let clodhoppers snore at their ease o'nights,
But we be lumbermen bold!"

The river woke from its dreams.

The river-guard, seated on piles of baulks by the waterside, shifted a
little.

"But we be lumbermen bold!"

cried the nearest. And the song was passed on from one point to
another, from shore to shore, all down the rapids, to the gangs below.

Then all was silent again, for midnight loves not song, though it does
demand a call from man to man through the dark. It loves better to
listen, while the river tells of the dread sea-monster that yearly
craves a human life, whether grown or child, but always a life a year.

All things solemn and still now. The moon sits quiet as if in church,
and jesting dies on the roughest lips. Many call to mind things seen
at such a time--a man drawn down by an invisible grasp, to rise no
more, a widow wringing her hands and wailing, fatherless children
crying and sobbing. Some there are who have seen the marks of the
water-spirits on a drowned man's body, or maybe seen the thing itself
rise up at midnight, furrowing the water with a gleam of light where
it moves. Whose turn next? None can say, but the danger is never far
off.

The little camp-fire flickered, the roar of the rapids grew fainter.
The moon sits listening to the legends of the river, and gazing down
into the water.

Suddenly a great shout is heard from below. The men start up.

"Lock in, lock in! Close the boom!" comes the cry.

A murmur of relief from the men. Wakened abruptly from the spell of
the hour, they had taken the hail at first for a cry of distress. They
race up, lifting their poles above their heads as a sign the fairway
is blocked, and the word of command, "Lock in, lock in!" is flung from
man to man along the bank.

"Lock in it is!" cries the man at the head, and runs from the
camp-fire down to the waterside. The rope is slipped, the end of the
boom hauled close up to the shore and made fast again.

"'Twill hold a bit," says one. "But like to be a long spell for us
all--for there's none'll care to get far out on the block to-night, if
it lasts. Let's go down and see."

The party made their way down the path by the edge of the bank.

As the last of the timber comes down, the guards by the rapids join
them, one after another. "Where'll it be?"

"Down below somewhere, must be. If only it's not t