the girl make good! That was the
urgeful sentiment which their thoughts inscribed on the invisible
oriflamme of the warfare that was waged for the new Joan along the
waters of the Noda.

It was not especially because she was the granddaughter of Echford
Flagg. His wages had never bought more than perfunctory service from
crews. She was herself--and she had confessed her debts.

When she told them why she was wearing Latisan's cap and jacket, when
she owned to her error and laid the blame on herself, when she pleaded
with them to help her in undoing the bitter mischief, she won a devotion
that questioned nothing.

"Men, he will come back. He will understand it all when he is himself
again. And if you and I are able to show him that we have done his work
well he will hold up his head once more as he has a right to do."

"God bless ye, girl, ye can't keep yourself apart from Latisan in this
thing," declared an old man. "It's for the two o' ye that we do our work
from now on! And it's for all of us, as well! For we'll ne'er draw happy
breaths till we can stand by and see you meet him on the level--eye to
eye--like one who has squared all accounts between you two! And the old
grands'r, as well. What say, boys?"

But cheers could not serve their emotions then. They pulled off their
caps and scrubbed their rough hands across their jackets and walked to
her in single file and shook her hand in pregnant silence.

And then the timber went through; the drive was beating all the past
records.

When they needed water they took it. They blew their own dams and were
very careless with dynamite when they came upon other dams of whose
ownership they were not so sure.

"You see, miss, rights are well mixed up all through this region," said
old Vittum, who had been spokesman for his fellows on her first meeting
with them. He gave her a demure wink. "The main idea is, God is making
this water run downhill just now, and it doesn't seem right for mortal
man to stop it from running."

They "manned the river," as the drivers say. That meant overlapping
crews, day and night.

No squad was out of sight of another; a yell above the roar of the flood
or a cap brandished on the end of a pike pole summoned help to break a
forming jam or to card logs off ledges or to dislodge "jillpokes" which
had stabbed their ends into the soggy banks of the river. Men ate as
they ran and they slept as they could. Some of them, snatching time to
eat,