wonderful, as he leaped from log to log with the swiftness and sureness
of a chamois. He had been lumbering all his life, and there was nothing
that fell to the lumberman's experience with which he was not perfectly
familiar. Yet it is doubtful if he ever had a more difficult or dangerous
task than that before him now. The "key-piece" of the jam was fully
exposed, and once it was cut in two it would no longer hold the
accumulation of logs together. They would be released from their bondage,
and springing forward with the full force of the pent-up current, would
rush madly down stream, carrying everything before them.

But what would Johnston do in the midst of this tumult? A few more
moments would tell; for his axe was dealing tremendous strokes, before
which the key-piece, stout though it was, must soon yield. Ah, it is
almost severed. The foreman pauses for an instant and glances keenly
around, evidently in order to see what will be his best course of action
when the jam breaks. Frank, in an agony of apprehension and anxiety, has
sunk to his knees, his lips moving in earnest prayer, while his eyes are
fixed on his beloved friend. Johnston's quick glance falls upon him, and,
catching the significance of his attitude, his face is irradiated with a
heavenly light of love as lie calls out across the boiling current,--

"God bless you, Frank! Keep praying."

Then he returns to his work. The keen axe flashes through the air in
stroke after stroke. At length there comes a sound that cannot be
mistaken. The foreman throws aside his axe and prepares to jump for
life; and, like one man, the breathless onlookers shout together as the
key-piece rends in two, and the huge jam, suddenly released, bursts away
from the rock and charges tumultuously down the river.