The raft pilot, followed by his men, entered the door of Burke's place. The roaring fire of logs in the great stone chimney was most welcome to them after their night of toil. They made a picturesque group as they stood stamping the mud and snow from their long-legged logging shoes and brushing the great, soft flakes from caps and homespun wamuses. The majority of the eight were stout, ordinary-looking young men, with something of the air of the woods in their manner and appearance. The pilot was an exception. He was of medium height and stoutly built, with an intelligent face, lighted up with keen, sharp, grey eyes, that flashed in merriment in repartee, and that were even cunning and penetrating at times. He was the American product of the "canny" Scotchman, a Scotch American. Along one side of the public room ran the rude bar counter with a few homely bottles and jugs, and near them, his rounded form a living advertisement for his wares, one eye smiling a welcome, the other, which was squint and cross-eyed, gazing unwinkingly, blankly, out of the window as if trying to penetrate the darkness, was the form of the tavern keeper. "Supper for eight?" asked the tavern keeper. "Aye, ye ken that," answered the raft pilot. Peter Burke, with a rolling motion, tumbled off to a rear door which he swung wide. "Supper for eight rafters," he bawled. "Arright," squeaked a distant, feminine voice. "Hallo, Hugh," said a deep voice from a corner near the flaming fireplace. "Hallo yerself," said the pilot. "What led you to pilot on a night like this, when the creek is getting higher and higher. I thought a raftsman ought to know that the proper time to raft is when the flood is falling, not rising." "Not always," said the pilot, and then added, "Is that you, Bill?" "Yes, it's I, sure enough." "Well, you're school-master and I'm raft pilot; every man to his own calling, and I suppose every man ought to know best what to do in his own calling; yet you'd criticise me for running timber on a rising flood." "There are little things in all trades that most everyone ought to know. I was riding to the Burg when I heard your shouts on the raft and I wondered what ill-witted fellow was running on a rising flood on a night like this." "Don't think it science, eh?" a little nettled to be called ill-witted. "No. Every one ought to know that when the stream is rising it is higher in the centre than it is on the sides and when falling higher on the sides than in the centre. Hence by due process of ratiocination,"--the school-master paused to give the large, scholarly word due emphasis--"you must run on a falling flood." "That's what 'tiz to be a scholard," muttered the tavern keeper, admiringly. "Aye, science and scholard," snorted Hugh Lark, the pilot; "and I suppose if you had a raft on a sand bar, you'd wait for a falling flood and jack it off with a hoisting jack, eh?"