A Damaged Reputation by Harold Bindloss

A dim, grey light was creeping through the rain when Brooke stopped on a ridge of hillside that broke off from the parent range above the mine. The pines were slowly growing into shape, though as yet they showed as mere spires of blackness in the sliding haze, and there was a faint glimmer in the hollow beneath him, while the sound of running water drowned the splashing of the rain. The snow upon the lower slopes had mostly melted now, though that on the great hill shoulders would swell the frothing rivers for months to come, and, sinking ankle-deep in quaggy mould, he went down through the dripping undergrowth until he stopped again on the verge of what had become in the last few days a muddy lake.

The wreckage of the higher forests was strewn upon it, but Brooke noticed that it drifted steadily in one direction, and floundering along the water's edge, he reached a narrow gully, which had served as outlet for the stream through the ridge that hemmed in the valley. The passage was, however, now choked by a mass of groaning timber, which was apparently growing every hour, and it already seemed scarcely possible to cut through that pile of wreckage by any means at his command. Once the pent-up water, which seemed rising rapidly, burst the jam, it would come down in an overwhelming torrent upon the mine, and he sat down on a fallen redwood to consider how the difficulty could be grappled with.