"Only some of them boulders you loosed coming down. It's touch and
go with them for days after. When I first came here I used to
start up and rush out into the road--like as you would--yellin' and
screechin' after folks that never was there and never went by.
Then it got kinder monotonous, and I'd lie still and let 'em slide.
Why, one night I'd a'sworn that some one pulled up with a yell and
shook the door. But I sort of allowed to myself that whatever it
was, it wasn't wantin' to eat, drink, sleep, or it would come in,
and I hadn't any call to interfere. And in the mornin' I found a
rock as big as that box, lying chock-a-block agin the door. Then I
knowed I was right."

Preble Key remained looking from the door.

"There's a glow in the sky over Big Canyon," he said, with a
meaning glance at Uncle Dick.

"Saw it an hour ago," said Collinson. "It must be the woods afire
just round the bend above the canyon. Whoever goes to Skinner's
had better give it a wide berth."

Key turned towards Collinson as if to speak, but apparently changed
his mind, and presently joined his companions, who were already
rolling themselves in their blankets, in a series of wooden bunks
or berths, ranged as in a ship's cabin, around the walls of a
resinous, sawdusty apartment that had been the measuring room of
the mill. Collinson disappeared,--no one knew or seemed to care
where,--and, in less than ten minutes from the time that they had
returned from the door, the hush of sleep and rest seemed to