Although the event was briefly recorded in the county paper, I had the
story, in all its eloquent detail, from the lips of the principal actor.
I cannot hope to catch the varying emphasis and peculiar coloring of
feminine delineation, for my narrator was a woman; but I'll try to give
at least its substance.

She lived midway of the great slough of Dedlow Marsh and a good-sized
river, which debouched four miles beyond into an estuary formed by
the Pacific Ocean, on the long sandy peninsula which constituted the
southwestern boundary of a noble bay. The house in which she lived was
a small frame cabin raised from the marsh a few feet by stout piles, and
was three miles distant from the settlements upon the river. Her husband
was a logger--a profitable business in a county where the principal
occupation was the manufacture of lumber.

It was the season of early spring when her husband left on the ebb of a
high tide, with a raft of logs for the usual transportation to the lower
end of the bay. As she stood by the door of the little cabin when the
voyagers departed she noticed a cold look in the southeastern sky, and
she remembered hearing her husband say to his companions that they must
endeavor to complete their voyage before the coming of the southwesterly
gale which he saw brewing. And that night it began to storm and blow
harder than she had ever before experienced, and some great trees fell
in the forest by the river, and the house rocked like her baby's cradle.

But however the storm might roar about the little cabin, she knew that
one she trusted had driven bolt and bar with his own strong hand, and
that had he feared for her he would not have left her. This, and her
domestic duties, and the care of her little sickly baby, helped to keep
her mind from dwelling on the weather, except, of course, to hope that