"Now, boys!" cried Orde. "Lively, while we've got the chance!"

By means of blocks and tackles and the team horses the twenty-six-
foot logs were placed side by side, slanting from a point two feet
below the rim of the fall to the ledge below. They were bolted
together top and bottom through the four holes bored for that
purpose. This was a confusing and wet business. Sufficient water
still flowed in the natural channel of the river to dash in spray
over the entire work. Men toiled, wet to the skin, their garments
clinging to them, their eyes full of water, barely able to breathe,
yet groping doggedly at it, and arriving at last. The weather was
warm with the midsummer. They made a joke of the difficulty, and
found inexhaustible humour in the fact that one of their number was
an Immersion Baptist. When the task was finished, they pried the
flash-boards from the improvised dam; piled them neatly beyond reach
of high water; rescued the sawhorses and piled them also for a
possible future use; blocked the temporary channel with a tree or
so--and earth. The river, restored to its immemorial channel by
these men who had so nonchalantly turned it aside, roared on,
singing again the song it had until now sung uninterruptedly for
centuries. Orde and his crew tramped back to the falls, and gazed
on their handiwork with satisfaction. Instead of plunging over an
edge into a turmoil of foam and eddies, now the water flowed
smoothly, almost without a break, over an incline of thirty degrees.

"Logs'll slip over that slick as a gun barrel," said Tom North.
"How long do you think she'll last?"

"Haven't an idea," replied Orde. "We may have to do it again next