A plan was mooted among the messes that following night, to cut out the front logs. The same scheme has been often put in execution. It was argued that by stretching a warping-line across the rapids, from cliff to cliff, directly over the foot of the jam, a man might be lowered on it, with his axe, and cut away the logs. A large "basket"--so it was talked--might be swung on the cable. By slackening the line the axe-man could be lowered to the logs; and the instant the sticks cracked under the strokes, he could leap to the "basket" and be pulled out of harm's way, and let the jam go through under him. The idea gained favor. The following morning the end of one of the seven hundred foot lines was taken across on the jam to the ledges on the west bank. Fifty men went over with it, to handle it. With a hundred men there was no difficulty in lowering and raising it at will. When drawn taut, it hung sixty feet above the foot of the jam. One of the Indian drivers, named Lahmunt, had been at work weaving a "basket" of ash strip; and as soon as this novel carriage was finished and slung on the cable, the project was ready for trial. While the project was being talked over, several of the drivers had declared themselves willing to undertake the feat; but now that the basket was slung, and after seeing it drawn out over the abyss, they were less disposed to proffer their services. It needed strong nerves and a stout heart to gaze into that foaming gulf and not turn dizzy. There was among us a youngster whom the old drivers called "Young Moll's Peevy." Young Moll was a half-breed (French and Indian) girl, or rather woman at this time, of thirty or thirty-three, and the mother of this boy. Some of the drivers said that his rightful patronymic was Skelly; but this was a rather obscure matter. She lived at one of those little half-savage villages such as are only to be found in the backwoods of Canada; and her name was a far too commonly spoken one with the drivers, though not more so than many another. Society in these parts had not taken high orders. Nature had her own way pretty much; they deemed it little sin. Even the omnipresent Romish priest has somehow failed to get much control over the average river-driver, always too much a nomad to feel the continued influence of local sanctuaries. The young woman realized the prevailing ideal of beauty; not a very refined one, perhaps; but the drivers deemed her fair.