It was a rough night in the wilds of western Pennsylvania. The rain had descended steadily for three days, and now the Lycamahoning had arisen from its ordinary rippling tranquillity into a boisterous, turbulent onrushing tide. Raftsmen had been constantly busy throughout the winter, felling the gigantic pines and firs, squaring them with their great broad axes, and then with the aid of hickory saplings and pins and bows of the same tough material, lashing them securely one against the other, rafting them in for the cruise down the river to the Ohio. The first flood had come, and so violent was its nature that many a hardy raftsman had added additional bulyokes and hawsers to his rafts, fearing the loss of his winter's labour. The night had set in stormy and dark. The clouds that had covered the face of the heavens for the greater part of the week had grown in intensity, and had been belching down their floods with renewed violence. The wind had arisen, softly at first, and then augmenting into a small tornado, charging through the acres of treetops that added additional sombreness to the murky night, until beaten to madness with the invisible storm weapons and stung with the drenching rain, tree fought with tree, lashing themselves with their wooden arms into an agony of conflict. "Who in the name of common sense can be running timber on a night like this? He is either a madman or an imbecile," so thought rather than said a horseman who had paused on the road to listen to the shouts. He placed his hand up over his brows, shielding his view from the drenching rain, and stared, from his elevation, out over the roaring stream. There was a flash of lightning, illuminating the yellow foam-flecked flood and out in the centre a raft, long and heavy, yet tossed like a feather on the rolling flood waves. There were two figures at the great rear oar, one of whom was the pilot, one figure in the centre with a coil of rope in his grasp, and at the front oar-running backward and forward, leaping on the great oar handle to jerk its cumbersome blade from the stream, running it back to the opposite side, plunging it in the flood once more, and with handle overhead pushing with might and main,--were six figures, seeming in the distance like the dancing forms of a puppet show, whose various motions were controlled by the dark form of the pilot in the rear. The flash of lightning passed away in a roll of thunder, and all was wrapped in darkness again. "Left! Left!" "Halt!" "Left! Left!" The raft was rounding a curve in the stream. "Left! Left! Push! Push, with a will. More backbone to it, boys! Once more and a glass of toddy at Burke's for each man! Left! Left! Now then! Heave to it! With all your might! Halt! Don't let it pull you off! Hold on to her!" bawled the raft pilot. "Again! Left! Left!" "Halt!" "Now then, Tom! Jump for it!" "Run out the rope!" "Snub! Snub!" "There, ease up, Tom! Take the next tree!"