Evidently George had interpreted his orders strictly, and when his eye failed him in the bewilderment of seeing a dozen sticks passing at a time, had stopped each one to scale it. Halloran turned to Du Bois. “Give the boy a lift, will you?” [Illustration: 0205] The old Inspector nodded, with a twinkle in his eye. “Here, young man,” he said, “take 'em down for me. Go ahead, boys!” He hitched himself up on the cap of a snubbing-post, and when the donkey-engines clanked again and the timbers came dropping and sliding to the wharf, and the files of labourers shuffled past, he went on with his story. His eyes roved absently up and down the wharf, and a half-circle of tobacco juice rapidly formed around the post. Not a stick escaped his eye, within a hundred feet of rapidly moving timbers; George's pencil was kept flying over the tally-sheet. “Yes, sir,” he went on, “we went down that bank--two-b'-four-fourteen, two-b'-eight-ten--like two cats--two-b'-ten-sixteen--a-fightin'. Two-b'-twelve-twelve. The Old Gentleman didn't--two-b'-twelve-eighteen-- know yet just what was up--two-b'-six-twelve, two-b'-six-fourteen--and he got his hand twisted up in my hair--two-b'-ten-ten, two-b'-ten- fourteen, two-b'-ten-twelve--and when we struck the water--two-b'- twelve-ten, two-b'-eight-eighteen--” A few minutes later, when Halloran passed again that way, Du Bois was still in the story, though he had now no auditor but the preoccupied George. That same night another steamer came in, and within a few days it was necessary to put on a night shift to keep up with the influx of lumber. The yards filled rapidly with high piles until the tramways and mills were nearly hidden from sight. New lumber it was, not yet so dry but that some of the water from the rivers still moistened it; and the air was sweet with the scent of pine. It brought to mind the deep forests far back from the lake, the rustle of the wind through the new boughs far overhead, and the long, still aisles, carpeted in fragrant brown, where the deer run. There were bears out there, skulking away from the axman, grubbing up wild turnips and hunting ants and slugs in rotten stumps; there were otter and muskrats and perhaps a lingering colony of beaver. Soon the time would come when the deer and bear could reclaim their lands, for the axmen were nearly through. Another score of years, perhaps, and where had been great forests would be a waste of blackened stumps--all “cut out” for the market. Rivers would be lower and dams useless. Thriving lumber cities on the lake would be facing ruin--their reason for being gone with the last timber--or casting about to attract manufacturers or to cultivate beets--anything to stop the drain on their vitality as the restless lumbermen should turn west or south for new lands where they could found new cities and begin the problem anew.