The Ledge on Bald Face

rine's Rip came to a rest. From the mills behind him screeched the untiring saws. Outstretched at his feet lay Jim, indolently snapping at flies. The men of the villa

e dog swam for it gaily, grabbed it by the top so that it could trail at his side, and brought it to his master's feet. It was a good paddle, of clean bird's-eye mapl

noe. The other things which had started out with it, the cushions and blan

ock turned to an old dug-out which lay hauled up on the shore, ran it down into the water and paddled out to salvage the wrecked canoe. He towed it to shore, emptied it, and scrutinized it. He thought he knew ever

at the head of the Run, likely, when he's gone ashore. He'd never hav

ould get his own canoe and pole up thro

under cover in his wood shed at the end of the village street. He shouldered it, carrying it over his head with the mid bar

nly too well he saw what it was. His face pale with concern, he thrust the canoe violently up into the tail of the rapid, just in time to catch the blindly spr

rrowfully. "He was a man all right, but

He understood-he saw the whole scene, and he swore compassionately under his breath,

r's scent was long ago soaked out of it. He looked it over, and pawed it, wagging his tail do

ck patted the jacket vigorously,

was to find the owner of the little jacket-a child-somewhere up the river. With a series of eager yel

saws had stopped, the men, powdered with yellow sawdust, were s

nto the wild current, leaving the dead man to the care of the coroner and the village authorities. Before he had battled his way more than a few hundred ya

d bore it away reverently to the court-room

nwards with the sweat dripping from jaws and tongue. Whenever he was forced away from the river, he would return to it at every fifty yards or so, and scan each rock, shoal or sand spit with keen

tared intently, and then burst into loud, ecstatic barkings as an announcement that his search had been successful. But t

larm and appeal. He could not see that the sluice between the sand spit and the bank was an effective barrier,

ream for another couple of hundred yards, and then, where a breadth of comparatively slack water beneath a long

errific draft of the main current, he was swept downward at a tremendous speed. But he had carried out his plan. He gained

ing, he thought it was the bear. With a piercing scream he once more hid his face in his hands, rigid with horror. Puzzled at this

nd looked around. Why, there was the bear, on the other side of the water, tremendous and terrible, but just where he had been thi

arms about Jim's shaggy neck and buried his face in the wet fur. And Jim, hi

im's shaggy neck and burie

, snatched the child up in his arms, and passed his great hand tenderly through that wonderful shock of whitey-gold silken

y!" he cried. "What

the child, his lip beginning

ather sudden, an' he sent me an' Jim, here, to look after you till

d Manners Watson," expl

u Woolly Billy for shor