see between the heaped logs a glow of sunlit water. I handed our
axe through a break in the wall, and then D'ri cut away some of the
baseboards and joined me. We had our meal cooking in a few
minutes--our dinner, really, for D'ri said it was near noon.
Having eaten, we crawled out of the window, and then D'ri began to
pry the logs apart.

"Ain't much 'fraid o' their tumblin' on us," said he. "They 're
withed so they 'll stick together."

We got to another cave under the logs, at the water's edge, after
an hour of crawling and prying. A side of the raft was in the
water.

"Got t' dive," said D'ri, "an' swim fer daylight."

A long swim it was, but we came up in clear water, badly out of
breath. We swam around the timber, scrambling over a dead cow, and
up-shore. The ruined raft was torn and tumbled into a very
mountain of logs at the edge of the water. The sun was shining
clear, and the air was still. Limbs of trees, bits of torn cloth,
a broken hay-rake, fragments of wool, a wagon-wheel, and two dead
sheep were scattered along the shore. Where we had seen the
whirlwind coming, the sky was clear, and beneath it was a great gap
in the woods, with ragged walls of evergreen. Here and there in
the gap a stub was standing, trunk and limbs naked.

"Jerushy Jane Pepper!" D'ri exclaimed, with a pause after each
word. "It's cut a swath wider 'n this river. Don't b'lieve a
mouse could 'a' lived where the timber 's down over there."