Page:The Millbank Case - 1905 - Eldridge.djvu/134

 They went everywhere and saw everything, and if there was an injured man in camp, it would take skill to keep him concealed from them.

Trafford chatted pleasantly with the cook and joked the boys, before he opened in a general way the subject of accidents—of which he seemed to stand in apprehension, declaring that log-driving was in his opinion the most dangerous of trades. At that the boys raised a shout of derision and extolled the trade to the skies. There was not one of them but was consumed with desire for a driver's life, exactly as he would be for any other life of freedom and activity whose claims for the moment were pressed upon him.

The old man, on the other hand, admitted the element of danger, and thrilled his hearers with accounts of hairbreadth escapes which he had witnessed in the long years that he had been on the river. There had been deaths, too; deaths from drowning and from crushing in the log jams. Still, the life was a grand one for the man who was not afraid of hard work, and if he had his to live over, he would live it on the river again. There had been