t work weaving a "basket" of
ash strip; and as soon as this novel carriage was finished and slung
on the cable, the project was ready for trial. While the project was
being talked over, several of the drivers had declared themselves
willing to undertake the feat; but now that the basket was slung, and
after seeing it drawn out over the abyss, they were less disposed to
proffer their services. It needed strong nerves and a stout heart to
gaze into that foaming gulf and not turn dizzy.

There was among us a youngster whom the old drivers called "Young
Moll's Peevy." Young Moll was a half-breed (French and Indian) girl,
or rather woman at this time, of thirty or thirty-three, and the
mother of this boy. Some of the drivers said that his rightful
patronymic was Skelly; but this was a rather obscure matter.

She lived at one of those little half-savage villages such as are only
to be found in the backwoods of Canada; and her name was a far too
commonly spoken one with the drivers, though not more so than many
another. Society in these parts had not taken high orders. Nature had
her own way pretty much; they deemed it little sin. Even the
omnipresent Romish priest has somehow failed to get much control over
the average river-driver, always too much a nomad to feel the
continued influence of local sanctuaries.

The young woman realized the prevailing ideal of beauty; not a very
refined one, perhaps; but the drivers deemed her fair.

"The Peevy," as he was half-humorously christened, must have been
nearly or quite nineteen. The name was said to have come to him one
day in boyhood, when a "peevy" was dropped off a glut into ten or a
dozen feet of water. Several of the drivers were trying to hook it up,
but kept missing it. The boy, then eleven or twelve years old, had
come along unobserved. Presently, and without saying a word, he
dropped off the logs, brought up the peevy, and ran away, dripping.
The men laughed, and not knowing his name, called him "the peevy-boy."
Afterward, when they had found out his mother, they named the urchin
"Young Moll's Peevy." This _sobriquet_ clung to him even after he had
reached manhood and worked with the gang, particularly among the older
men who remembered the circumstance. But his mother called him Lotte.
A stranger would not easily have believed him the child of the fresh
young person who had cared for him; for he was unusually stalwart and
bronzed by exposure. Seen together, they rather