She watched the logs go by in a never-ending procession. The scene fascinated her, although, in a sense, she was singularly devoid of either imagination or perception. Movement beguiled a woman whose own life had been stagnant for five-and-twenty years. Deep down in her heart was the unformulated but inevitable conviction that the logs were moving and that she was standing still. Tom loomed large in the immediate foreground. He, too, moved so swiftly that his huge form lacked definition. She saw him snatch a pole from one of the men and stab viciously at a log which refused to budge; and every time that his arm rose and fell a little shudder trickled down her spinal column. The log seemed to receive the blows apathetically. A bad jam was imminent. She could hear Tom swearing, and the other logs floating on and on seemed to hear him also, and tremble. His bull's voice rose loud above the roar of the falls. Mamie looked down. At her feet crouched Dennis, the dog, and he also was trembling at those raucous sounds, and Mamie could feel his thin ribs pressing against her own thin legs. At that moment light came to her obscure mind. She was like the log. She refused to budge, funked the plunge, submitting to unending blows, and words which were almost worse than blows. And by her obstinacy and apathy she was driving the best man on God's earth to premeditated murder. That morning, let us remember, Tom had beaten the dog, and because she had interfered with a pitiful protest her husband had struck her close to the temple. Ever since this blow she had heard the roar of the falls with increasing intensity. "Why don't it move?" she asked herself. As she put the question the log did move, borne away by the full current. Mamie, followed by the dog, ran after it, with her eyes aflame with excitement. Dennis barked, divining something uncanny, eager to distract the mind of his mistress from what seemed to be engrossing it. Still she ran on, with her eyes upon the log. The dog knew that she must stop in a moment, that no one could pass the falls unless they went over them. Did he divine also that she meant to go over them--that at last, with her poor, imperfect vision, she had seen that way out of captivity? She reached the point where farther advance was impossible. To her right rose a solid wall of stone; opposite rose its twin; between the two the river rushed tumultuously, tossing the great logs hither and thither as if they were spilikins. Mamie watched her own log. After its goadings it kept a truer course than most of its fellows. But she had outstripped it. Standing upon the edge of the precipice, feeling the cold spray upon her face, hearing the maddening roar of the monster below, less to be feared than that other monster from whom she realised that she had escaped, she waited for the final plunge....