As the mighty tree yields up its life and comes to the ground with a grand far-echoing crash, it is set upon by "buckers" (who saw its great trunk into thirty-foot lengths), barkers, rigging-slingers, hand-skidders and teamsters, whose splendid horses, aided by tackle of iron blocks and length of wire-rope, drag it out to the "skid-road." This is a cleared and rudely graded track, set with heavy cross-ties, over which the logs may slide, and it is provided with wire cables, whose half-mile lengths are operated by stationary engines. By this means "turns" of five or six of the huge logs, chained one behind the other, are hauled down the winding skid-road through gulch and valley, to a distant railway landing. There they are loaded on a long train of heavy flat cars that departs every night for the mills on Puget Sound. Here the sawed lumber is run aboard waiting ships, and sent in them to all ports on both shores of the Pacific. The light-hearted loggers were laughing and joking, lighting their pipes, picking up tools, and beginning to straggle toward the road that led to camp, when suddenly big Buck Raulet, the head "faller," who was keener of hearing than any of his mates, called out: "Hush up, fellows, and listen! I thought I heard a yell off there in the timber." In the silence that followed they all heard a cry, faint and distant, but so filled with distress that there was no mistaking its import. "There's surely somebody in trouble!" cried Raulet. "Lost like as not. Anyway, they are calling to us for help, and we can't go back on 'em. So come on, men. You teamsters stay here with your horses, and give us a yell every now and then, so we can come straight back; for even we don't want to fool round much in these woods after dark. Hello, you out there! Locate yourselves!" So the calling and answering was continued for nearly ten minutes, while the rescuing party, full of curiosity and good-will, plunged through the gathering gloom, over logs and rocks, through beds of tall ferns and banks of moss, in which they sank above their ankles, until they came at length to those whom they were seeking--two lads, one standing and calling to them, the other lying motionless, where he had fallen in a dead faint from utter exhaustion. "You see," explained Alaric, apologetically, half sobbing with joy at finding himself once more surrounded by friendly faces, "he has been very ill, and we've had a hard day, with nothing to eat. So he gave out. I should have too, but just then I heard the sound of chopping, and knew the light was shining, and--and--" Here the poor tired lad broke down, sobbing hysterically, and trying to laugh at the same time. "There! there, son!" exclaimed Buck Raulet, soothingly, but with a suspicious huskiness in his voice. "Brace up, and forget your troubles as quick as you can; for they're all over now, and you sha'n't go hungry much longer. But where did you say you came from?" "The top of the mountain."