Rose O' the River
by Kate Douglas Wiggin
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman

by

Kate Douglas Wiggin  
  
  
  
  
Table of Contents  

THE PINE AND THE ROSE  
"OLD KENNEBEC"  
THE EDGEWOOD "DRIVE"  
"BLASPHEMIOUS SWEARIN'"  
THE GAME OF JACKSTRAWS  
HEARTS AND OTHER HEARTS  
THE LITTLE HOUSE  
THE GARDEN OF EDEN  
THE SERPENT  
THE TURQUOISE RING  
ROSE SEES THE WORLD  
GOLD AND PINCHBECK  
A COUNTRY CHEVALIER  
HOUSEBREAKING  
THE DREAM ROOM  
  
  
  
  
THE PINE AND THE ROSE   
  
It was not long after sunrise, and Stephen Waterman, fresh from  
his dip in the river, had scrambled up the hillside from the hut  
in the alder-bushes where he had made his morning toilet.  
  
An early ablution of his sort was not the custom of the farmers  
along the banks of the Saco, but the Waterman house was hardly a  
stone's throw from the water, and there was a clear, deep  
swimming-hole in the Willow Cove that would have tempted the  
busiest man, or the least cleanly, in York County. Then, too,  
Stephen was a child of the river, born, reared, schooled on its  
very brink, never happy unless he were on it, or in it, or beside  
it, or at least within sight or sound of it.  
  
The immensity of the sea had always silenced and overawed him,  
left him cold in feeling. The river wooed him, caressed him, won  
his heart. It was just big enough to love. It was full of  
charms and changes, of varying moods and sudden surprises. Its  
voice stole in upon his ear with a melody far sweeter and more  
subtle than the boom of the ocean. Yet it was not without  
strength, and when it was swollen with the freshets of the spring  
and brimming with the bounty of its sister streams, it could dash  
and roar, boom and crash, with the best of them.
  
Stephen stood on the side porch, drinking in the glory of the  
sunrise, with the Saco winding like a silver ribbon through the  
sweet loveliness of the summer landscape.  
  
And the river rolled on toward the sea, singing its morning song,  
creating and nourishing beauty at every step of its onward path.  
Cradled in the heart of a great mountain-range, it pursued its  
gleaming way, here lying silent in glassy lakes, there rushing  
into tinkling little falls, foaming great falls, and thundering  
cataracts. Scores of bridges spanned its width, but no steamers  
flurried its crystal depths. Here and there a rough little  
rowboat, tethered to a willow, rocked to and fro in some quiet  
bend of the shore. Here the silver gleam of a rising perch,  
chub, or trout caught the eye; there a pickerel lay rigid in the  
clear water, a fish carved in stone: here eels coiled in the  
muddy bottom of some pool; and there, under the deep shadows of  
the rocks, lay fat, sleepy bass, old, and incredibly wise, quite  
untempted by, and wholly superior to, the rural fisherman's worm.
  
The river lapped the shores of peaceful meadows; it flowed along  
banks green with maple, beech, sycamore, and birch; it fell  
tempestuously over darns and fought its way between rocky cliffs  
crowned with stately firs. It rolled past forests of pine and  
hemlock and spruce, now gentle, now terrible; for there is said  
to be an Indian curse upon the Saco, whereby, with every great  
sun, the child of a paleface shall be drawn into its cruel  
depths. Lashed into fury by the stony reefs that impeded its  
progress, the river looked now sapphire, now gold, now white, now  
leaden gray; but always it was hurrying, hurrying on its  
appointed way to the sea.
  
After feasting his eyes and filling his heart with a morning  
draught of beauty, Stephen went in from the porch and, pausing at  
the stairway, called in stentorian tones: "Get up and eat your  
breakfast, Rufus! The boys will be picking the side jams today,  
and I'm going down to work on the logs. If you come along, bring  
your own pick-pole and peavey."  Then, going to the kitchen  
pantry, he collected, from the various shelves, a pitcher of  
milk, a loaf of bread, half an apple-pie, and a bowl of  
blueberries, and, with the easy methods of a household unswayed  
by feminine rule, moved toward a seat under an apple-tree and  
took his morning meal in great apparent content. Having  
finished, and washed his dishes with much more thoroughness than  
is common to unsuperintended man, and having given Rufus the  
second call to breakfast with the vigor and acrimony that usually  
marks that unpleasant performance, he strode to a high point on  
the river-bank  and, shading his eyes with his hand, gazed  
steadily down stream.
  
Patches of green fodder and blossoming potatoes melted into soft  
fields that had been lately mown, and there were glimpses of  
tasseling corn rising high to catch the sun. Far, far down on  
the opposite bank of the river was the hint of a brown roof, and  
the tip of a chimney that sent a slender wisp of smoke into the  
clear air. Beyond this, and farther back from the water, the   
trees apparently hid a cluster of other chimneys, for thin  
spirals of smoke ascended here and there. The little brown roof  
could never have revealed itself to any but a lover's eye; and  
that discerned something even smaller, something like a pinkish  
speck, that moved hither and thither on a piece of greensward  
that sloped to the waterside.  
  
"She's up!" Stephen exclaimed under his breath, his eyes shining,  
his lips smiling. His voice had a note of hushed exaltation  
about it, as if "she," whoever she might be, had, in  
condescending to rise, conferred a priceless boon upon a waiting  
universe. If she were indeed a "up"  (so his tone implied), then  
the day, somewhat falsely heralded by the sunrise, had really  
begun, and the human race might pursue its appointed tasks,  
inspired and uplifted by the consciousness of her existence. It  
might properly be grateful for the fact of her birth; that she  
had grown to woman's estate; and, above all, that, in common with  
the sun, the lark, the morning-glory, and other beautiful things  
of the early day, she was up and about her lovely, cheery,  
heart-warming business.
  
The handful of chimneys and the smoke spirals rising here and  
there among the trees on the river-bank belonged to what was  
known as the Brier Neighborhood. There were only a few houses in  
all, scattered along a side road leading from the river up to  
Liberty Centre. There were no great signs of thrift or  
prosperity, but the Wiley cottage, the only one near the water,  
was neat and well cared for, and Nature had done her best to  
conceal man's indolence, poverty, or neglect.
  
Bushes of sweetbrier grew in fragrant little forests as tall as  
the fences. Clumps of wild roses sprang up at every turn, and  
over all the stone walls, as well as on every heap of rocks by  
the wayside, prickly blackberry vines ran and clambered and  
clung, yielding fruit and thorns impartially to the neighborhood  
children.
  
The pinkish speck that Stephen Waterman had spied from his side  
of the river was Rose Wiley of the Brier Neighborhood on the  
Edgewood side. As there was another of her name on Brigadier  
Hill, the Edgewood minister called one of them the climbing Rose  
and the other the brier Rose, or sometimes Rose of the river.  
She was well named, the pinkish speck. She had not only some of  
the sweetest attributes of the wild rose, but the parallel might  
have been extended as far as the thorns, for she had wounded her  
scores,--hearts, be it understood, not hands. The wounding was,  
on the whole, very innocently done; and if fault could be imputed  
anywhere, it might rightly have been laid at the door of the kind  
powers who had made her what she was, since the smile that  
blesses a single heart is always destined to break many more.  
  
She had not a single silk gown, but she had what is far better, a  
figure to show off a cotton one. Not a brooch nor a pair of  
earrings was numbered among her possessions, but any ordinary  
gems would have looked rather dull and trivial when compelled to  
undergo comparison with her bright eyes. As to her hair, the  
local milliner declared it impossible for Rose Wiley to get an  
unbecoming hat; that on one occasion, being in a frolicsome mood,  
Rose had tried on all the headgear in the village emporium,--  
children's gingham "Shakers," mourning bonnets for aged dames,  
men's haying hats and visored caps,--and she proved superior to  
every test, looking as pretty as a pink in the best ones and  
simply ravishing in the worst. In fact, she had been so  
fashioned and finished by Nature that, had she been set on a  
revolving pedestal in a show-window, the bystanders would have  
exclaimed, as each new charm came into view: "Look at her  
waist!"  "See her shoulders!"  "And her neck and chin!"  "And  
her hair!"   While the children, gazing with raptured admiration,  
would have shrieked, in unison, "I choose her for mine."  
  
All this is as much as to say that Rose of the river was a  
beauty, yet it quite fails to explain, nevertheless, the secret  
of her power. When she looked her worst the spell was as potent  
as when she looked her best. Hidden away somewhere was a vital  
spark which warmed every one who came in contact with it. Her  
lovely little person was a trifle below medium height, and it  
might as well be confessed that her soul, on the morning when  
Stephen Waterman saw her hanging out the clothes on the river  
bank, was not large enough to be at all out of proportion; but  
when eyes and dimples, lips and cheeks, enslave the onlooker, the  
soul is seldom subjected to a close or critical scrutiny.  
Besides, Rose Wiley was a nice girl, neat as wax, energetic,  
merry, amiable, economical. She was a dutiful granddaughter to  
two of the most irritating old people in the county; she never  
patronized her pug-nosed, pasty-faced girl friends; she made  
wonderful pies and doughnuts; and besides, small souls, if they  
are of the right sort, sometimes have a way of growing, to the  
discomfiture of cynics and the gratification of the angels.
  
So, on one bank of the river grew the brier rose, a fragile  
thing, swaying on a slender stalk and looking at its pretty  
reflection in the water; and on the other a sturdy pine tree,  
well rooted against wind and storm. And the sturdy pine yearned  
for the wild rose; and the rose, so far as it knew, yearned for  
nothing at all, certainly not for rugged pine trees standing tall  
and grim in rocky soil. If, in its present stage of development,  
it gravitated toward anything in particular, it would have been a  
well-dressed white birch growing on an irreproachable lawn.
  
And the river, now deep, now shallow, now smooth, now tumultuous,  
now sparkling in sunshine, now gloomy under clouds, rolled on to  
the engulfing sea. It could not stop to concern itself with the  
petty comedies and tragedies that were being enacted along its  
shores, else it would never have reached its destination. Only  
last night, under a full moon, there had been pairs of lovers  
leaning over the rails of all the bridges along its course; but  
that was a common sight, like that of the ardent couples sitting  
on its shady banks these summer days, looking only into each  
other's eyes, but exclaiming about the beauty of the water.  
Lovers would come and go, sometimes reappearing with successive  
installments of loves in a way wholly mysterious to the river.  
Meantime it had its own work to do and must be about it, for the  
side jams were to be broken and the boom "let out" at the  
Edgewood bridge.
  
  
  
OLD KENNEBEC  
  
It was just seven o'clock that same morning when Rose Wiley  
smoothed the last wrinkle from her dimity counterpane, picked up  
a shred of corn-husk from the spotless floor under the bed,  
slapped a mosquito on the window-sill, removed all signs of  
murder with a moist towel, and before running down to breakfast  
cast a frowning look at her pincushion. Almira, otherwise  
"Mite," Shapley had been in her room the afternoon before and  
disturbed with her careless hand the pattern of Rose's pins.  
They were kept religiously in the form of a Maltese cross; and  
if, while she was extricating one from her clothing, there had  
been an alarm of fire, Rose would have stuck the pin in its  
appointed place in the design, at the risk of losing her life.
  
Entering the kitchen with her light step, she brought the morning  
sunshine with her. The old people had already engaged in  
differences of opinion, but they commonly suspended open warfare  
in her presence. There were the usual last things to be done for  
breakfast, offices that belonged to her as her grandmother's  
assistant. She took yesterday's soda biscuits out of the steamer  
where they were warming and softening; brought an apple pie and a  
plate of seed cakes from the pantry; settled the coffee with a  
piece of dried fish skin and an egg shell; and transferred some  
fried potatoes from the spider to a covered dish.
  
"Did you remember the meat, grandpa? We're all out," she said, as  
she began buttoning a stiff collar around his reluctant neck.
  
"Remember? Land, yes! I wish't I ever could forgit anything!  
The butcher says he's 'bout tired o' travelin' over the country  
lookin' for critters to kill, but if he finds anything he'll be  
up along in the course of a week. He ain't a real smart butcher,  
Cyse Higgins ain't.--Land, Rose, don't button that dickey  
clean through my epperdummis! I have to sport starched collars  
in this life on account o' you and your gran'mother bein' so  
chock full o' style; but I hope to the Lord I shan't have to wear  
'em in another world!"  
  
"You won't," his wife responded with the snap of a dish towel, "or if you do,  
they'll wilt with the heat."  
  
Rose smiled, but the soft hand with which she tied the neck-cloth  
about the old man's withered neck pacified his spirit, and he  
smiled knowingly back at her as she took her seat at the  
breakfast table spread near the open kitchen door. She was a  
dazzling Rose, and, it is to be feared, a wasted one, for there  
was no one present to observe her clean pink calico and the still  
more subtle note struck in the green ribbon which was tied round  
her throat,--the ribbon that formed a sort of calyx, out of  
which sprang the flower of her face, as fresh and radiant as if  
it had bloomed that morning.
  
"Give me my coffee turrible quick," said Mr. Wiley; "I must be  
down the bridge 'fore they start dog-warpin' the side jam."  
  
"I notice you're always due at the bridge on churnin' days,"  
remarked his spouse, testily.
  
"'Taint me as app'ints drivin' dates at Edgewood," replied the  
old man. "The boys'll hev a turrible job this year. The logs air  
ricked up jest like Rose's jackstraws; I never see'em so turrible  
ricked up in all my exper'ence; an' Lije Dennett don' know no  
more 'bout pickin' a jam than Cooper's cow. Turrible sot in his  
ways, too; can't take a mite of advice. I was tellin' him how to  
go to work on that bung that's formed between the gre't gray rock  
an' the shore,--the awfullest place to bung that there is  
between this an' Biddeford,--and says he: 'Look here, I've  
be'n boss on this river for twelve year, an' I'll be doggoned if  
I'm goin' to be taught my business by any man!'  'This ain't no  
river,' says I, 'as you'd know,' says I, 'if you'd ever lived on  
the Kennebec.'  'Pity you hedn't stayed on it,' says he. 'I wish  
to the land I hed,'says I. An' then I come away, for my  
tongue's so turrible spry an' sarcustic that I knew if I stopped  
any longer I should stir up strife. There's some folks that'll  
set on addled aigs year in an' year out, as if there wan't good  
fresh ones bein' laid every day; an' Lije Dennett's one of 'em,  
when it comes to river drivin'."  
  
"There's lots o' folks as have made a good livin' by mindin'  
their own business," observed the still sententious Mrs. Wiley,  
as she speared a soda-biscuit with her fork.
  
"Mindin' your own business is a turrible selfish trade," responded  
her husband loftily. "If your neighbor is more ignorant than what  
you are,--partic'larly if he's as ignorant as Cooper's cow,--you'd  
ought, as a Kennebec man an' a Christian, to set him on the right  
track, though it's always a turrible risky thing to do."  
  
Rose's grandfather was called, by the irreverent younger  
generation, sometimes "Turrible Wiley" and sometimes "Old  
Kennebec," because of the frequency with which these words  
appeared in his conversation. There were not wanting those of  
late who dubbed him Uncle Ananias, for reasons too obvious to  
mention. After a long, indolent, tolerably truthful, and useless  
life, he had, at seventy-five, lost sight of the dividing line  
between fact and fancy, and drew on his imagination to such an  
extent that he almost staggered himself when he began to indulge  
in reminiscence. He was a feature of the Edgewood "drive," being  
always present during the five or six days that it was in  
progress, sometimes sitting on the river-bank, sometimes leaning  
over the bridge, sometimes reclining against the butt-end of a  
huge log, but always chewing tobacco and expectorating to  
incredible distances as he criticized and damned impartially all  
the expedients in use at the particular moment.
  
"I want to stay down by the river this afternoon," said Rose.  
"Ever so many of the girls will be there, and all my sewing is  
done up. If grandpa will leave the horse for me, I'll take the  
drivers' lunch to them at noon, and bring the dishes back in time  
to wash them before supper."  
  
"I suppose you can go, if the rest do," said her grandmother,  
"though it's an awful lazy way of spendin' an afternoon. When I  
was a girl there was no such dawdlin' goin' on, I can tell you.  
Nobody thought o' lookin' at the river in them days; there wasn't  
time."  
  
"But it's such fun to watch the logs!" Rose exclaimed. "Next to  
dancing, the greatest fun in the world."  
  
"'Specially as all the young men in town will be there, watchin',  
too," was the grandmother's reply. "Eben Brooks an' Richard Bean  
got home yesterday with their doctors' diplomas in their pockets.  
Mrs. Brooks says Eben stood forty-nine in a class o' fifty-five,  
an' seemed consid'able proud of him; an' I guess it is the first  
time he ever stood anywheres but at the foot. I tell you when  
these fifty-five new doctors git scattered over the country  
there'll be consid'able many folks keepin' house under ground.  
Dick Bean's goin' to stop a spell with Rufe an' Steve Waterman.  
That'll make one more to play in the river."  
  
"Rufus ain't hardly got his workin' legs on yit," allowed  
Mr.Wiley, "but Steve's all right. He's a turrible smart driver,  
an' turrible reckless, too. He'll take all the chances there is,  
though to a man that's lived on the Kennebec there ain't what can  
rightly be called any turrible chances on the Saco."  
  
"He'd better be 'tendin' to his farm," objected Mrs. Wiley.
  
"His hay is all in," Rose spoke up quickly, "and he only helps  
on the river when the farm work isn't pressing. Besides, though  
it's all play to him, he earns his two dollars and a half a day."  
  
"He don't keer about the two and a half," said her grandfather.  
"He jest can't keep away from the logs. There's some that can't.  
When I first moved here from Gard'ner, where the climate never  
suited me"--  
  
"The climate of any place where you hev regular work never did  
an' never will suit you," remarked the old man's wife; but the  
interruption received no comment: such mistaken views of his  
character were too frequent to make any impression.
  
"As I was sayin', Rose," he continued, "when we first moved here  
from Gard'ner, we lived neighbor to the Watermans. Steve an'  
Rufus was little boys then, always playin' with a couple o' wild  
cousins o' theirn, consid'able older. Steve would scare his  
mother pretty nigh to death stealin' away to the mill to ride on  
the 'carriage,''side o' the log that was bein' sawed, hitchin'  
clean out over the river an' then jerkin' back 'most into the  
jaws o' the machinery."  
  
"He never hed any common sense to spare, even when he was a young  
one," remarked Mrs. Wiley; " and I don't see as all the 'cademy  
education his father throwed away on him has changed him much."   
And with this observation she rose from the table and went to the  
sink.
  
"Steve ain't nobody's fool," dissented the old man; "but he's  
kind o' daft about the river. When he was little he was allers  
buildin' dams in the brook, an' sailin' chips, an' runnin' on the  
logs; allers choppin' up stickins an' raftin' 'em together in the  
pond. I cal'late Mis' Waterman died consid'able afore her time,  
jest from fright, lookin' out the winders and seein' her boys  
slippin' between the logs an' gittin' their daily dousin'. She  
could n't understand it, an' there's a heap o' things women-folks  
never do an' never can understand,--jest because they air  
women-folks."  
  
"One o' the things is men, I s'pose," interrupted Mrs. Wiley.
  
"Men in general, but more partic'larly husbands," assented Old  
Kennebec; "howsomever, there's another thing they don't an' can't  
never take in, an' that's sport. Steve does river drivin' as he  
would horseracin' or tiger-shootin' or tight-rope dancin'; an' he  
always did from a boy. When he was about twelve or fifteen, he  
used to help the river-drivers spring and fall, reg'lar. He  
couldn't do nothin' but shin up an' down the rocks after hammers  
an' hatchets an' ropes, but he was turrible pleased with his job.  
'Stepanfetchit,' they used to call him them days,  
--Stephanfetchit Waterman."  
  
"Good name for him yet," came in acid tones from the sink. "He's  
still steppin' an' fetchin', only it's Rose that's doin' the  
drivin' now."  
  
"I'm not driving anybody, that I know of," answered Rose, with  
heightened color, but with no loss of her habitual self-command.  
  
"Then, when he graduated from errants," went on the crafty old  
man, who knew that when breakfast ceased, churning must begin,  
"Steve used to get seventy-five cents a day helpin' clear up the  
river--if you can call this here silv'ry streamlet a river.
He'd pick off a log here an' there an' send it afloat, an' dig  
out them that hed got ketched in the rocks, and tidy up the banks  
jest like spring house-cleanin'. If he'd hed any kind of a boss,  
an' hed be'n trained on the Kennebec, he'd 'a' made a turrible  
smart driver, Steve would."  
  
"He'll be drownded, that's what'll become o' him," prophesied  
Mrs. Wiley; "'specially if Rose encourages him in such silly  
foolishness as ridin' logs from his house down to ourn, dark  
nights."  
  
"Seein' as how Steve built ye a nice pig  pen last month, 'pears  
to me you might  have a good word for him now an' then,  mother,"  
remarked Old Kennebec, reaching  for his second piece of pie.
  
"I wa'n't a mite deceived by that pig pen, no more'n I was by Jed  
Towle's hen coop, nor Ivory Dunn's well-curb, nor Pitt Packard's  
shed-steps. If you hed ever kep' up your buildin's yourself,  
Rose's beaux  wouldn't hev to do their courtin' with carpenters'  
tools."  
  
"It's the pigpen an' the hencoop you  want to keep your eye on,  
mother, not the motives of them as made 'em. It's turrible  
onsettlin' to inspeck folks' motives too turrible close."  
  
"Riding a log is no more to Steve than riding a horse, so he  
says," interposed Rose, to change the subject; "but I tell him  
that a horse doesn't revolve under you, and go sideways at the  
same time that it is going forwards."  
  
"Log-ridin' ain't no trick at all to a man of sperit," said Mr.
Wiley. "There's a few places in the Kennebec where the water's  
too shaller to let the logs float, so we used to build a flume,  
an' the logs would whiz down like arrers shot from a bow. The  
boys used to collect by the side o' that there flume to see me  
ride a log down, an' I've watched 'em drop in a dead faint when I  
spun by the crowd; but land! you can't drownd some folks, not  
without you tie nail-kegs to their head an' feet an' drop 'em in  
the falls; I 've rid logs down the b'ilin'est rapids o' the  
Kennebec an' never lost my head. I remember well the year o' the  
gre't freshet, I rid a log from"--  
  
"There, there, father, that'll do," said Mrs. Wiley, decisively.  
"I'll put the cream in the churn, an' you jest work off some o'  
your steam by bringin' the butter for us afore you start for the  
bridge. It don't do no good to brag afore your own womenfolks;  
work goes consid'able better'n stories at every place 'cept the  
loafers' bench at the tavern."  
  
And the baffled raconteur, who had never done a piece of work  
cheerfully in his life, dragged himself reluctantly to the shed,  
where, before long, one could hear him moving the dasher up and  
down sedately to his favorite "churning tune" of--  
  
Broad is the road that leads to death,  
And thousands walk together there;   
But Wisdom shows a narrow path,   
With here and there a traveler.
  
  
  
THE EDGEWOOD "DRIVE"  
  
Just where the bridge knits together the two little villages of  
Pleasant River and Edgewood, the glassy mirror of the Saco  
broadens suddenly, sweeping over the dam in a luminous torrent.  
Gushes of pure amber mark the middle of the dam, with crystal and  
silver at the sides, and from the seething vortex beneath the  
golden cascade the white spray dashes up in fountains. In the  
crevices and hollows of the rocks the mad water churns itself  
into snowy froth, while the foam-decked torrent, deep, strong,  
and troubled to its heart, sweeps majestically under the bridge,  
then dashes between wooded shores piled high with steep masses of  
rock, or torn and riven by great gorges.
  
There had been much rain during the summer, and the Saco was very  
high, so on the third day of the Edgewood drive there was  
considerable excitement at the bridge, and a goodly audience of  
villagers from both sides of the river. There were some who  
never came, some who had no fancy for the sight, some to whom it  
was an old story, some who were too busy, but there were many to  
whom- it was the event of events, a never-ending source of  
interest.
  
Above the fall, covering the placid surface of the river,  
thousands of logs lay quietly "in boom" until the "turning out"  
process, on the last day of the drive, should release them and  
give them their chance of display, their brief moment of  
notoriety, their opportunity of interesting, amusing, exciting,  
and exasperating the onlookers by their antics.
  
Heaps of logs had been cast up on the rocks below the dam, where  
they lay in hopeless confusion, adding nothing, however, to the  
problem of the moment, for they too bided their time. If they  
had possessed wisdom, discretion, and caution, they might have  
slipped gracefully over the falls and, steering clear of the  
hidden ledges (about which it would seem they must have heard  
whispers from the old pine trees along the river), have kept a  
straight course and reached their destination without costing the  
Edgewood Lumber Company a small fortune. Or, if they had  
inclined toward a jolly and adventurous career, they could have  
joined one of the various jams or "bungs," stimulated by the  
thought that any one of them might be a key-log, holding for a  
time the entire mass in its despotic power. But they had been  
stranded early in the game, and, after lying high and dry for  
weeks, would be picked off one by one and sent down-stream.
  
In the tumultuous boil, the foaming hubbub and flurry at the foot  
of the falls, one enormous peeled log wallowed up and down like a  
huge rhinoceros, greatly pleasing the children by its clumsy  
cavortings. Some conflict of opposing forces kept it ever in  
motion, yet never set it free. Below the bridge were always the  
real battle-grounds, the scenes of the first and the fiercest  
conflicts. A ragged ledge of rock, standing well above the  
yeasty torrent, marked the middle of the river. Stephen had been  
stranded there once, just at dusk, on a stormy afternoon in  
spring. A jam had broken under the men, and Stephen, having  
taken too great risks, had been caught on the moving mass, and,  
leaping from log to log, his only chance for life had been to  
find a footing on Gray Rock, which was nearer than the shore.
  
Rufus was ill at the time, and Mrs. Waterman so anxious and  
nervous that processions of boys had to be sent up to the River  
Farm, giving the frightened mother the latest bulletins of her  
son's welfare. Luckily, the river was narrow just at the Gray  
Rock, and it was a quite possible task, though no easy one, to  
lash two ladders together and make a narrow bridge on which the  
drenched and shivering man could reach the shore. There were  
loud cheers when Stephen ran lightly across the slender pathway  
that led to safety--ran so fast that the ladders had scarce time  
to bend beneath his weight. He had certainly "taken chances," but  
when did he not do that? The logger's life is one of "moving  
accidents by flood and field," and Stephen welcomed with wild  
exhilaration every hazard that came in his path. To him there  
was never a dull hour from the moment that the first notch was  
cut in the tree (for he sometimes joined the boys in the lumber  
camp just for a frolic) till the later one when the hewn log  
reached its final destination. He knew nothing of "tooling" a  
four-in-hand through narrow lanes or crowded thoroughfares,--  
nothing of guiding a horse over the hedges and through the  
pitfalls of a stiff bit of hunting country; his steed was the  
rearing, plunging, kicking log, and he rode it like a river god.
  
The crowd loves daring, and so it welcomed Stephen with braves,  
but it knew, as he knew, that he was only doing his duty by the  
Company, only showing the Saco that man was master, only keeping  
the old Waterman name in good repute.
  
"Ye can't drownd some folks," Old Kennebec had said, as he stood  
in a group on the shore; "not without you tie sand-bags to'em an'  
drop 'em in the Great Eddy. I'm the same kind; I remember when I  
was stranded on jest sech a rock in the Kennebec, only they left  
me there all night for dead, an' I had to swim the rapids when it  
come daylight."  
  
"We're well acquainted with that rock and them rapids," exclaimed  
one of the river-drivers, to the delight of the company.
  
Rose had reason to remember Stephen's adventure, for he had  
clambered up the bank, smiling and blushing under the hurrahs of  
the boys, and, coming to the wagon where she sat waiting for her  
grandfather, had seized a moment to whisper: "Did you care  
whether I came across safe, Rose? Say you did!"  
  
Stephen recalled that question, too, on this August morning;  
perhaps because this was to be a red-letter day, and sometime,  
when he had a free moment,--sometime before supper, when he and  
Rose were sitting apart from the others, watching the logs,--he  
intended again to ask her to marry him. This thought trembled in  
him, stirring the deeps of his heart like a great wave, almost  
sweeping him off his feet when he held it too close and let it  
have full sway. It would be the fourth time that he had asked  
Rose this question of all questions, but there was no perceptible  
difference in his excitement, for there was always the possible  
chance that she might change her mind and say yes, if only for  
variety. Wanting a thing continuously, unchangingly, unceasingly,  
year after year, he thought,--longing to reach it as the river  
longed to reach the sea,--such wanting might, in course of  
time, mean having.
  
Rose drove up to the bridge with the men's luncheon, and the  
under boss came up to take the baskets and boxes from the back of  
the wagon.
  
"We've had a reg'lar tussle this mornin', Rose," he said. "The  
logs are determined not to move. Ike Billings, that's the  
han'somest and fluentest all-round swearer on the Saco, has tried  
his best on the side jam. He's all out o' cuss-words and there  
hain't a log budged. Now, stid o' dogwarpin' this afternoon, an'  
lettin' the oxen haul off all them stubborn logs by main force,  
we're goin' to ask you to set up on the bank and smile at the  
jam. 'Land! she can do it!' says Ike a minute ago. 'When Rose  
starts smilin',' he says, 'there ain't a jam nor a bung in me  
that don't melt like wax and jest float right off same as the  
logs do when they get into quiet, sunny water.'"  
  
Rose blushed and laughed, and drove up the hill to Mite  
Shapley's, where she put up the horse and waited till the men had  
eaten their luncheon. The drivers slept and had breakfast and  
supper at the Billings house, a mile down river, but for several  
years Mrs. Wiley had furnished the noon meal, sending it down  
piping hot on the stroke of twelve. The boys always said that up  
or down the whole length of the Saco there was no such cooking as  
the Wileys', and much of this praise was earned by Rose's  
serving. It was the old grandmother who burnished the tin plates  
and dippers till they looked like silver; for crotchety and  
sharp-tongued as she was--she never allowed Rose to spoil her  
hands with soft soap and sand: but it was Rose who planned and  
packed, Rose who hemmed squares of old white tablecloths and  
sheets to line the baskets and keep things daintily separate,  
Rose, also, whose tarts and cakes were the pride and admiration  
of church sociables and sewing societies.
  
Where could such smoking pots of beans be found? A murmur of  
ecstatic approval ran through the crowd when the covers were  
removed. Pieces of sweet home-fed pork glistened like varnished  
mahogany on the top of the beans, and underneath were such deeps  
of fragrant juice as come only from slow fires and long, quiet  
hours in brick ovens. Who else could steam and bake such mealy  
leaves of brown bread, brown as plum-pudding, yet with no  
suspicion of sogginess? Who such soda-biscuits, big, feathery,  
tasting of cream, and hardly needing butter? And green-apple  
pies! Could such candied lower crusts be found elsewhere,or more  
delectable filling? Or such rich, nutty doughnuts?--doughnuts  
that had spurned the hot fat which is the ruin of so many, and  
risen from its waves like golden-brown Venuses.
  
"By the great seleckmen!" ejaculated Jed Towle, as he swallowed  
his fourth, "I'd like to hev a wife, two daughters, and four  
sisters like them Wileys, and jest set still on the river-bank  
an' hev 'em cook victuals for me. I'd hev nothin' to wish for  
then but a mouth as big as the Saco's."  
  
"And I wish this custard pie was the size o' Bonnie Eagle Pond,"  
said Ike Billings. "I'd like to fall into the middle of it and  
eat my way out!"  
  
"Look at that bunch o' Chiny asters tied on t' the bail o' that  
biscuit-pail!" said Ivory Dunn. "That's the girl's doin's, you  
bet women-folks don't seem to make no bo'quets after they git  
married. Let's divide 'em up an' wear 'em drivin' this  
afternoon; mebbe they'll ketch the eye so't our rags won't show  
so bad. Land! it's lucky my hundred days is about up! If I  
don't git home soon, I shall be arrested for goin' without  
clo'es. I set up'bout all night puttin' these blue patches in my  
pants an' tryin' to piece together a couple of old red-flannel  
shirts to make one whole one. That's the worst o' drivin' in  
these places where the pretty girls make a habit of comin' down  
to the bridge to see the fun. You hev to keep rigged up jest so  
stylish; you can't git no chance at the rum bottle, an' you even  
hev to go a leetle mite light on swearin'."  
  
  
  
"BLASPHEMIOUS SWEARIN'"  
  
"Steve Waterman's an awful nice feller," exclaimed Ivory Dunn just  
then. Stephen had been looking intently across the river,  
watching the Shapleys' side door, from which Rose might issue at  
any moment; and at this point in the discussion he had lounged  
away from the group, and, moving toward the bridge, began to  
throw pebbles idly into the water.  
  
"He's an awful smart driver for one that don't foiler drivin' the  
year round," continued Ivory; "and he's the awfullest  
clean-spoken, soft-spoken feller I ever see."  
  
"There's be'n two black sheep in his family a'ready, an' Steve  
kind o' feels as if he'd ought to be extry white," remarked Jed  
Towle. "You fellers that belonged to the old drive remember  
Pretty Quick Waterman well enough? Steve's mother brought him  
up."  
  
Yes; most of them remembered the Waterman twins, Stephen's  
cousins, now both dead,--Slow Waterman, so moderate in his  
steps and actions that you had to fix a landmark somewhere near  
him to see if he moved; and Pretty Quick, who shone by comparison  
with his twin.
  
"I'd kind o' forgot that Pretty Quick Waterman was cousin to  
Steve," said the under boss; "he never worked with me much, but  
he wa'n't cut off the same piece o' goods as the other Watermans.  
Great hemlock! but he kep' a cussin' dictionary, Pretty Quick  
did! Whenever he heard any new words he must 'a' writ 'em down,  
an' then studied 'em all up in the winter-time, to use in the  
spring drive."  
  
"Swearin''s a habit that hed ought to be practiced with turrible  
caution," observed old Mr. Wiley, when the drivers had finished  
luncheon and taken out their pipes. "There's three kinds o'  
swearin',--plain swearin', profane swearin', an' blasphemious  
swearin'. Logs air jest like mules: there's times when a man  
can't seem to rip up a jam in good style 'thout a few words  
that's too strong for the infant classes in Sunday-schools; but a  
man hedn't ought to tempt Providence. When he's ridin' a log  
near the falls at high water, or cuttin' the key-log in a jam, he  
ain't in no place for blasphemious swearin'; jest a little easy,  
perlite'damn' is 'bout all he can resk, if he don't want to git  
drownded an' hev his ghost walkin' the river-banks till kingdom  
come.
  
"You an' I, Long, was the only ones that seen Pretty Quick go,  
wa'n't we?"  continued Old Kennebec, glancing at Long Abe  
Dennett (cousin to Short Abe), who lay on his back in the grass,  
the smoke-wreaths rising from his pipe, and the steel spikes in  
his heavy, calked-sole boots shining in the sun.
  
"There was folks on the bridge," Long answered, "but we was the  
only ones near enough to see an' hear. It was so onexpected, an'  
so soon over, that them as was watchin' upstream, where the men  
was to work on the falls, wouldn't 'a' hed time to see him go  
down. But I did, an' nobody ain't heard me swear sence, though  
it's ten years ago. I allers said it was rum an' bravadder that  
killed Pretty Quick Waterman that day. The boys hedn't give him  
a 'dare' that he hedn't took up. He seemed like he was  
possessed, an' the logs was the same way; they was fairly wild,  
leapin' around in the maddest kind o' water you ever see. The  
river was b'ilin' high that spring; it was an awful stubborn jam,  
an' Pretty Quick, he'd be'n workin' on it sence dinner."  
  
"He clumb up the bank more'n once to have a pull at the bottle  
that was hid in the bushes," interpolated Mr. Wiley.
  
"Like as not; that was his failin'. Well, most o' the boys were  
on the other side o' the river, workin' above the bridge, an' the  
boss hed called Pretty Quick to come off an' leave the jam till  
mornin', when they'd get horses an' dog-warp it off, log by log.  
But when the boss got out o' sight, Pretty Quick jest stood right  
still, swingin' his axe, an' blasphemin' so 't would freeze your  
blood, vowin' he wouldn't move till the logs did, if he stayed  
there till the crack o' doom. Jest then a great, ponderous log  
that hed be'n churnin' up an' down in the falls for a week, got  
free an' come blunderin' an' thunderin' down-river. Land! it  
was chockfull o' water, an' looked 'bout as big as a church! It  
come straight along, butt-end foremost, an' struck that jam, full  
force, so't every log in it shivered. There was a crack,--the  
crack o' doom, sure enough, for Pretty Quick,--an' one o' the  
logs le'p' right out an' struck him jest where he stood, with his  
axe in the air, blasphemin'. The jam kind o' melted an' crumbled  
up, an' in a second Pretty Quick was whirlin' in the white water.  
He never riz,--at least where we could see him,--an' we  
didn't find him for a week. That's the whole story, an' I guess  
Steve takes it as a warnin'. Any way, he ain't no friend to rum  
nor swearin', Steve ain't. He knows Pretty Quick's ways  
shortened his mother's life, an' you notice what a sharp lookout  
he keeps on Rufus."  
  
"He needs it," Ike Billings commented tersely.
  
"Some men seem to lose their wits when they're workin' on logs,"  
observed Mr. Wiley, who had deeply resented Long Dennett's  
telling of a story which he knew fully as well and could have  
told much better. "Now, nat'rally, I've seen things on the  
Kennebec "--  
  
"Three cheers for the Saco! Hats off, boys!" shouted Jed Towle,  
and his directions were followed with a will.
  
"As I was sayin'," continued the old man, peacefully, "I've seen  
things on the Kennebec that wouldn't happen on a small river,  
an' I've be'n in turrible places an' taken turrible resks--  
resks that would 'a' turned a Saco River man's hair white; but  
them is the times when my wits work the quickest. I remember  
once I was smokin' my pipe when a jam broke under me. 'T was a  
small jam, or what we call a small jam on the Kennebec,--only  
about three hundred thousand pine logs. The first thing I  
knowed, I was shootin' back an' forth in the b'ilin' foam,  
hangin' on t' the end of a log like a spider. My hands was  
clasped round the log, and I never lost control o' my pipe. They  
said I smoked right along, jest as cool an' placid as a  
pond-lily."  
  
"Why'd you quit drivin'?" inquired Ivory.
  
"My strength wa'n't ekal to it," Mr. Wiley responded sadly. "I  
was all skin, bones, an' nerve. The Comp'ny wouldn't part with  
me altogether, so they give me a place in the office down on the  
wharves."  
  
"That wa'n't so bad," said Jed Towle; "why didn't you hang on to  
it, so's to keep in sight o' the Kennebec?"  
  
"I found I couldn't be confined under cover. My liver give all  
out, my appetite failed me, an' I wa'n't wuth a day's wages. I'd  
learned engineerin' when I was a boy, an' I thought I'd try  
runnin' on the road a spell, but it didn't suit my constitution.  
My kidneys ain't turrible strong, an' the doctors said I'd have  
Bright's disease if I didn't git some kind o' work where there  
wa'n't no vibrations."  
  
"Hard to find, Mr. Wiley; hard to find!" said Jed Towle.
  
"You're right," responded the old man feelingly. "I've tried all  
kinds o' labor. Some of 'em don't suit my liver, some disagrees  
with my stomach, and the rest of 'em has vibrations; so here I  
set, high an' dry on the banks of life, you might say, like a  
stranded log."  
  
As this well-known simile fell upon the ear, there was a general  
stir in the group, for Turrible Wiley, when rhetorical, sometimes  
grew tearful, and this was a mood not to be encouraged.
  
"All right, boss," called Ike Billings, winking to the boys;  
"we'll be there in a jiffy!" for the luncheon hour had flown, and  
the work of the afternoon was waiting for them. "You make a  
chalk-mark where you left off, Mr. Wiley, an' we'll hear the rest  
to-morrer; only don't you forgit nothin'! Remember't was the  
Kennebec you was talkin' about."  
  
"I will, indeed," responded the old man. "As I was sayin' when  
interrupted, I may be a stranded log, but I'm proud that the mark  
o' the Gard'ner Lumber Comp'ny is on me, so't when I git to my  
journey's end they'll know where I belong and send me back to the  
Kennebec. Before I'm sawed up I'd like to forgit this triflin'  
brook in the sight of a good-sized river, an' rest my eyes on  
some full-grown logs,'stead o' these little damn pipestems you  
boys are playin' with!"  
  
  
  
THE GAME OF JACKSTRAWS  
  
There was a roar of laughter at the old man's boast, but in a  
moment all was activity. The men ran hither and thither like  
ants, gathering their tools. There were some old-fashioned  
pickpoles, straight, heavy levers without any "dog," and there  
were modern pickpoles and peaveys, for every river has its  
favorite equipment in these things. There was no dynamite in  
those days to make the stubborn jams yield, and the dog-warp was  
in general use. Horses or oxen, sometimes a line of men, stood  
on the river-bank. A long rope was attached by means of a steel  
spike to one log after another, and it was dragged from the  
tangled mass. Sometimes, after unloading the top logs, those at  
the bottom would rise and make the task easier; sometimes the  
work would go on for hours with no perceptible progress, and Mr.
Wiley would have opportunity to tell the bystanders of a  
"turrible jam" on the Kennebec that had cost the Lumber Company  
ten thousand dollars to break.
  
There would be great arguments on shore, among the villagers as  
well as among the experts, as to the particular log which might  
be a key to the position. The boss would study the problem from  
various standpoints, and the drivers themselves would pass from  
heated discussion into long consultations.
  
"They're paid by the day," Old Kennebec would philosophize to the  
doctor; "an' when they're consultin' they don't hev to be  
doggin', which is a turrible sight harder work."  
  
Rose had created a small sensation, on one occasion, by pointing  
out to the under boss the key-log in a jam. She was past  
mistress of the pretty game of jackstraws, much in vogue at that  
time. The delicate little lengths of polished wood or bone were  
shaken together and emptied on the table. Each jackstraw had one  
of its ends fashioned in the shape of some sort of implement,--  
a rake, hoe, spade, fork, or mallet. All the pieces were  
intertwined by the shaking process, and they lay as they fell, in  
a hopeless tangle. The task consisted in taking a tiny pickpole,  
scarcely bigger than a match, and with the bit of curved wire on  
the end lifting off the jackstraws one by one without stirring  
the pile or making it tremble. When this occurred, you gave  
place to your opponent, who relinquished his turn to you when ill  
fortune descended upon him, the game, which was a kind of  
river-driving and jam-picking in miniature, being decided by the  
number of pieces captured and their value. No wonder that the  
under boss asked Rose's advice as to the key-log. She had a  
fairy's hand, and her cunning at deciding the pieces to be moved,  
and her skill at extricating and lifting them from the heap, were  
looked upon in Edgewood as little less than supernatural. It was  
a favorite pastime; and although a man's hand is ill adapted to  
it, being over-large and heavy; the game has obvious advantages  
for a lover in bringing his head very close to that of his  
beloved adversary. The jackstraws have to be watched with a  
hawk's eagerness, since the "trembling" can be discerned only by  
a keen eye; but there were moments when Stephen was willing to  
risk the loss of a battle if he could watch Rose's drooping  
eyelashes, the delicate down on her pink cheek, and the feathery  
curls that broke away from her hair.
  
He was looking at her now from a distance, for she and Mite  
Shapley were assisting Jed Towle to pile up the tin plates and  
tie the tin dippers together. Next she peered into one of the  
bean-pots, and seemed pleased that there was still something in  
its depths; then she gathered the fragments neatly together in a  
basket, and, followed by her friend, clambered down the banks to  
a shady spot where the Boomshers, otherwise known as the Crambry  
family, were "lined up" expectantly.
  
It is not difficult to find a single fool in any community,  
however small; but a family of fools is fortunately somewhat  
rarer. Every county, however, can boast of one fool-family, and  
Itork County is always in the fashion, with fools as with  
everything else. The unique, much-quoted, and undesirable  
Boomshers could not be claimed as indigenous to the Saco valley,  
for this branch was an offshoot of a still larger tribe  
inhabiting a distant township. Its beginnings were shrouded in  
mystery. There was a French-Canadian ancestor somewhere, and a  
Gipsy or Indian grandmother. They had always intermarried from  
time immemorial. When one of the selectmen of their native place  
had been asked why the Boomshers always married cousins, and why  
the habit was not discouraged, he replied that he really didn't  
know; he s'posed they felt it would be kind of odd to go right  
out and marry a stranger.
  
Lest "Boomsher" seem an unusual surname, it must be explained  
that the actual name was French and could not be coped with by  
Edgewood or Pleasant River, being something quite as impossible  
to spell as to pronounce. As the family had lived for the last  
few years somewhere near the Killick Cranberry Meadows, they were  
called--and completely described in the calling--the Crambry  
fool-family. A talented and much traveled gentleman who once  
stayed over night at the Edgewood tavern, proclaimed it his  
opinion that Boomsher had been gradually corrupted from  
Beaumarchais. When he wrote the word on his visiting card and  
showed it to Mr. Wiley, Old Kennebec had replied, that in the  
judgment of a man who had lived in large places and seen a  
turrible lot o' life, such a name could never have been given  
either to a Christian or a heathen family,--that the way in  
which the letters was thrown together into it, and the way in  
which they was sounded when read out loud, was entirely ag'in  
reason. It was true, he said, that Beaumarchais, bein' such a  
fool name, might 'a' be'n invented a-purpose for a fool family,  
but he wouldn't hold even with callin' 'em Boomsher; Crambry was  
well enough for'em an' a sight easier to speak.
  
Stephen knew a good deal about the Crambrys, for he passed their  
so-called habitation in going to one of his wood-lots. It was  
only a month before that he had found them all sitting outside  
their broken-down fence, surrounded by decrepit chairs, sofas,  
tables, bedsteads, bits of carpet, and stoves.  
  
"What's the matter?" he called out from his wagon.
  
"There ain't nothin' the matter," said Alcestis Crambry.
"Father's dead, an we're dividin' up the furnerchure."  
  
Alcestis was the pride of the Crambrys, and the list of his  
attainments used often to be on his proud father's lips. It was  
he who was the largest, "for his size," in the family; he who  
could tell his brothers Paul and Arcadus "by their looks;" he who  
knew a sour apple from a sweet one the minute he bit it; he who,  
at the early age of ten, was bright enough to point to the  
cupboard and say, "Puddin', dad!"  
  
Alcestis had enjoyed, in consequence of his unusual intellectual  
powers, some educational privileges, and the Killick  
schoolmistress well remembered his first day at the village seat  
of learning. Reports of what took place in this classic temple  
from day to day may have been wafted to the dull ears of the boy,  
who was not thought ready for school until he had attained the  
ripe age of twelve. It may even have been that specific rumors  
of the signs, symbols, and hieroglyphics used in educational  
institutions had reached him in the obscurity of his cranberry  
meadows. At all events, when confronted by the alphabet chart,  
whose huge black capitals were intended to capture the wandering  
eyes of the infant class, Alcestis exhibited unusual, almost  
unnatural, excitement.
  
"That is 'A,' my boy," said the teacher genially, as she pointed  
to the first character on the chart.
  
"Good God, is that 'A'! " exclaimed Alcestis, sitting down  
heavily on the nearest bench. And neither teacher nor scholars  
could discover whether he was agreeably surprised or disappointed  
in the letter,--whether he had expected, if he ever encountered  
it, to find it writhing in coils on the floor of a cage, or  
whether it simply bore no resemblance to the ideal already  
established in his mind.
  
Mrs. Wiley had once tried to make something of Mercy, the oldest  
daughter of the family, but at the end of six weeks she announced  
that a girl who couldn't tell whether the clock was going  
"forrards or backwards," and who rubbed a pocket handkerchief as  
long as she did a sheet, would be no help in her household.
  
The Crambrys had daily walked the five or six miles from their  
home to the Edgewood bridge during the progress of the drive, not  
only for the social and intellectual advantages to be gained from  
the company present, but for the more solid compensation of a  
good meal. They all adored Rose, partly because she gave them  
food, and partly because she was sparkling and pretty and wore  
pink dresses that caught their dull eyes.
  
The afternoon proved a lively one. In the first place, one of  
the younger men slipped into the water between two logs, part of  
a lot chained together waiting to be let out of the boom. The  
weight of the mass higher up and the force of the current wedged  
him in rather tightly, and when he had been "pried" out he  
declared that he felt like an apple after it had been squeezed in  
the cider-mill, so he drove home, and Rufus Waterman took his  
place.
  
Two hours' hard work followed this incident, and at the end of  
that time the "bung" that reached from the shore to Waterman's  
Ledge (the rock where Pretty Quick met his fate) was broken up,  
and the logs that composed it were started down river. There  
remained now only the great side-jam at Gray Rock. This had been  
allowed to grow, gathering logs as they drifted past, thus making  
higher water and a stronger current on the other side of the  
rock, and allowing an easier passage for the logs at that point.
  
All was excitement now, for, this particular piece of work  
accomplished, the boom above the falls would be "turned out," and  
the river would once more be clear and clean at the Edgewood  
bridge.
  
Small boys, perching on the rocks with their heels hanging, hands  
and mouths full of red Astrakhan apples, cheered their favorites  
to the echo, while the drivers shouted to one another and watched  
the signs and signals of the boss, who could communicate with  
them only in that way, so great was the roar of the water.
  
The jam refused to yield to ordinary measures. It was a  
difficult problem, for the rocky river-bed held many a snare and  
pitfall. There was a certain ledge under the water, so artfully  
placed that every log striking under its projecting edges would  
wedge itself firmly there, attracting others by its evil example.
  
"That galoot-boss ought to hev shoved his crew down to that jam  
this mornin'," grumbled Old Kennebec to Alcestis Crambry, who was  
always his most loyal and attentive listener. "But he wouldn't  
take no advice, not if Pharaoh nor Boat nor Herod nor Nicodemus  
come right out o' the Bible an' give it to him. The logs air  
contrary to-day. Sometimes they'll go along as easy as an old  
shoe, an' other times they'll do nothin' but bung, bung, bung!  
There's a log nestlin' down in the middle o' that jam that I've  
be'n watchin' for a week. It's a cur'ous one, to begin with; an'  
then it has a mark on it that you can reco'nize it by. Did ye  
ever hear tell o' George the Third, King of England, Alcestis, or  
ain't he known over to the crambry medders? Well, once upon a  
time men used to go through the forests over here an' slash a  
mark on the trunks o' the biggest trees. That was the royal  
sign, as you might say, an' meant that the tree was to be taken  
over to England to make masts an' yard-arms for the King's ships.  
What made me think of it now is that the King's mark was an  
arrer, an' it's an arrer that's on that there log I'm showin' ye.  
Well, sir, I seen it fust at Milliken's Mills a Monday. It was  
in trouble then, an'it's be'n in trouble ever sence. That's  
allers the way; there'll be one pesky, crooked, contrary,  
consarn'ed log that can't go anywheres without gittin' into  
difficulties. You can yank it out an' set it afloat, an' before  
you hardly git your doggin' iron off of it, it'll be snarled up  
agin in some new place. From the time it's chopped down to the  
day it gets to Saco, it costs the Comp'ny 'bout ten times its  
pesky valler as lumber. Now they've sent over to Benson's for a  
team of horses, an' I bate ye they can't git'em. I wish I was  
the boss on this river, Alcestis."   
  
"I wish I was," echoed the boy.
  
"Well, your head-fillin' ain't the right kind for a boss,  
Alcestis, an' you'd better stick to dry land. You set right down  
here while I go back a piece an' git the pipe out o' my coat  
pocket. I guess nothin' ain't goin' to happen for a few  
minutes."  
  
The surmise about the horses, unlike most of Old Kennebec's,  
proved to be true. Benson's pair had gone to Portland with a  
load of hay; accordingly the tackle was brought, the rope was  
adjusted to a log, and five of the drivers, standing on the  
riverbank, attempted to drag it from its intrenched position. It  
refused to yield the fraction of an inch. Rufus and Stephen  
joined the five men, and the augmented crew of seven were putting  
all their strength on the rope when a cry went up from the  
watchers on the bridge. The "dog" had loosened suddenly, and the  
men were flung violently to the ground. For a second they were  
stunned both by the surprise and by the shock of the blow, but in  
the same moment the cry of the crowd swelled louder.
  
Alcestis Crambry had stolen, all unoticed, to the rope and had  
attempted to use his feeble powers for the common good. When  
then blow came he fell backward, and, making no effort to control  
the situation, slid over the bank and into the water.  
  
The other Crambrys, not realizing the danger, laughed, audibly,  
but there was no jeering from the bridge.
  
Stephan had seen Alcestis slip, and in the fraction of a moment  
had taken off his boots and was coasting down the slippery rocks  
behind him in a twinkling he was in the water, almost as soon as  
the boy himself.
  
"Doggoned idjut!" exclaimed Old Kennebec, tearfully. "Wuth the  
hull fool family! If I hedn't 'a' be'n so old, I'd 'a' jumped  
in myself, for you can't drownd a Wiley, not without you tie  
nail-kegs to their head an' feet an' drop 'em in the falls."  
  
Alcestis, who had neither brains, courage, nor experience, had,  
better still, the luck that follows the witless. He was carried  
swiftly down the current; but, only fifty feet away, a long,  
slender, log, wedged between two low rocks on the shore, jutted  
out over the water, almost touching its surface. The boy's  
clothes were admirably adapted to the situation, being full of  
enormous rents. In some way the end of the log caught in the  
rags of Alcestis's coat and held him just seconds enough to  
enable Stephen to swim to him, to seize him by the nape of the  
neck, to lift him on the log, and thence to the shore. It was a  
particularly bad place for a landing, and there was nothing to do  
but to lower ropes and drag the drenched men to the high ground  
above.
  
Alcestis came to his senses in ten or fifteen minutes, and seemed  
as bright as usual: with a kind of added swagger at being the  
central figure in a dramatic situation.
  
"I wonder you hedn't stove your brains out, when you landed so  
turrible suddent on that rock at the foot of the bank," said Mr.
Wiley to him. "I should, but I took good care to light on my  
head," responded Alcestis; a cryptic remark which so puzzled Old  
Kennebec that he mused over it for some hours.
  
  
  
HEARTS AND OTHER HEARTS  
  
Stephen had brought a change of clothes, as he had a habit of  
being ducked once at least during the day; and since there was a  
halt in the proceedings and no need of his services for an hour  
or two, he found Rose and walked with her to a secluded spot  
where they could watch the logs and not be seen by the people.
  
"You frightened everybody almost to death, jumping into the  
river," chided Rose.
  
Stephen laughed. "They thought I was a fool to save a fool, I  
suppose."  
  
"Perhaps not as bad as that, but it did seem reckless."  
  
"I know; and the boy, no doubt, would be better off dead; but so  
should I be, if I could have let him die."   
  
Rose regarded this strange point of view for a moment, and then  
silently acquiesced in it. She was constantly doing this, and  
she often felt that her mental horizon broadened in the act; but  
she could not be sure that Stephen grew any dearer to her because  
of his moral altitudes.
  
"Besides," Stephen argued, "I happened to be nearest to the  
river, and it was my job."  
  
"How do you always happen to be nearest to the people in trouble,  
and why is it always your 'job'!"   
  
"If there are any rewards for good conduct being distributed, I'm  
right in line with my hand stretched out," Stephen replied, with  
meaning in his voice.
  
Rose blushed under her flowery hat as he led the way to a bench  
under a sycamore tree that overhung the water.
  
She had almost convinced herself that she was as much in love  
with Stephen Waterman as it was in her nature to be with anybody.  
He was handsome in his big way, kind, generous, temperate, well  
educated, and well-to-do. No fault could be found with his  
family, for his mother had been a teacher, and his father, though  
a farmer, a college graduate. Stephen himself had had one year  
at Bowdoin, but had been recalled, as the head of the house, when  
his father died. That was a severe blow; but his mother's death,  
three years after, was a grief never to be quite forgotten.  
Rose, too, was the child of a gently bred mother, and all her  
instincts were refined. Yes; Stephen in himself satisfied her in  
all the larger wants of her nature, but she had an unsatisfied  
hunger for the world,--the world of Portland, where her cousins  
lived; or, better still, the world of Boston, of which she heard  
through Mrs. Wealthy Brooks, whose nephew Claude often came to  
visit her in Edgewood. Life on a farm a mile and a half distant  
from post-office and stores; life in the house with Rufus, who  
was rumored to be somewhat wild and unsteady,--this prospect  
seemed a trifle dull and uneventful to the trivial part of her,  
though to the better part it was enough. The better part of her  
loved Stephen Waterman, dimly feeling the richness of his nature,  
the tenderness of his affection, the strength of his character.  
Rose was not destitute either of imagination or sentiment. She  
did not relish this constant weighing of Stephen in the balance:  
he was too good to be weighed and considered. She longed to be  
carried out of herself on a wave of rapturous assent, but  
something seemed to hold her back,--some seed of discontent  
with the man's environment and circumstances, some germ of  
longing for a gayer, brighter, more varied life. No amount of  
self-searching or argument could change the situation. She  
always loved Stephen more or less: more when he was away from  
her, because she never approved his collars nor the set of his  
shirt bosom; and as he naturally wore these despised articles of  
apparel whenever he proposed to her, she was always lukewarm  
about marrying him and settling down on the River Farm. Still,  
to-day she discovered in herself, with positive gratitude, a  
warmer feeling for him than she had experienced before. He wore  
a new and becoming gray flannel shirt, with the soft turnover  
collar that belonged to it, and a blue tie, the color of his kind  
eyes. She knew that he had shaved his beard at her request not  
long ago, and that when she did not like the effect as much as  
she had hoped, he had meekly grown a mustache for her sake; it  
did seem as if a man could hardly do more to please an exacting  
lady-love.
  
And she had admired him unreservedly when he pulled off his boots  
and jumped into the river to save Alcestis Crambry's life,  
without giving a single thought to his own. And was there ever,  
after all, such a noble, devoted, unselfish fellow, or a better  
brother? And would she not despise herself for rejecting him  
simply because he was countrified, and because she longed to see  
the world of the fashion-plates in the magazines?
  
"The logs are so like people!" she exclaimed, as they sat down.  
"I could name nearly every one of them for somebody in the  
village. Look at Mite Shapley, that dancing little one, slipping  
over the falls and skimming along the top of the water, keeping  
out of all the deep places, and never once touching the rocks."  
  
Stephen fell into her mood. "There's Squire Anderson coming down  
crosswise and bumping everything in reach. You know he's always  
buying lumber and logs without knowing what he is going to do  
with them. They just lie and rot by the roadside. The boys  
always say that a toad-stool is the old Squire's 'mark' on a  
log."  
               
"And that stout, clumsy one is Short Dennett.--What are you  
doing, Stephen!"  
  
"Only building a fence round this clump of harebells," Stephen  
replied. "They've just got well rooted, and if the boys come  
skidding down the bank with their spiked shoes, the poor things  
will never hold up their heads again. Now they're safe.--Oh,  
look, Rose! There come the minister and his wife!"  
  
A portly couple of peeled logs, exactly matched in size, came  
ponderously over the falls together, rose within a second of each  
other, joined again, and swept under the bridge side by side.
  
"And--oh! oh! Dr. and Mrs. Cram just after them! Isn't that  
funny?" laughed Rose, as a very long, slender pair of pines swam  
down, as close to each other as if they had been glued in that  
position. Rose thought, as she watched them, who but Stephen  
would have cared what became of the clump of delicate harebells.  
How gentle such a man would be to a woman! How tender his touch  
would be if she were ill or in trouble!
  
Several single logs followed,--crooked ones, stolid ones,  
adventurous ones, feeble swimmers, deep divers. Some of them  
tried to start a small jam on their own account; others stranded  
themselves for good and all, as Rose and Stephen sat there side  
by side, with little Dan Cupid for an invisible third on the  
bench.
  
"There never was anything so like people," Rose repeated, leaning  
forward excitedly. "And, upon my word, the minister and doctor  
couples are still together. I wonder if they'll get as far as  
the falls at Union? That would be an odd place to part, wouldn't  
it--Union?"  Stephen saw his opportunity, and seized it.
  
"There's a reason, Rose, why two logs go down stream better than  
one, and get into less trouble. They make a wider path, create  
more force and a better current. It's the same way with men and  
women. Oh, Rose, there isn't a man in the world that's loved  
you as long, or knows how to love you any better than I do.  
You're just like a white birch sapling, and I'm a great, clumsy  
fir tree; but if you'll only trust yourself to me, Rose, I'll  
take you safely down river."  
  
Stephen's big hand closed on Rose's little one she returned its  
pressure softly and gave him the kiss that with her, as with him,  
meant a promise for all the years to come. The truth and passion  
in the man had broken the girl's bonds for the moment. Her  
vision was clearer, and, realizing the treasures of love and  
fidelity that were being offered her, she accepted them, half  
unconscious that she was not returning them in kind. How is the  
belle of two villages to learn that she should "thank Heaven,  
fasting, for a good man's love"? And Stephen? He went home in  
the dusk, not knowing whether his feet were touching the solid  
earth or whether he was treading upon rainbows.
  
Rose's pink calico seemed to brush him as he walked in the path  
that was wide enough only for one. His solitude was peopled  
again when he fed the cattle, for Rose's face smiled at him from  
the haymow; and when he strained the milk, Rose held the pans.
  
His nightly tasks over, he went out and took his favorite seat  
under the apple tree. All was still, save for the crickets'  
ceaseless chirp, the soft thud of an August sweeting dropping in  
the grass, and the swish-swash of the water against his boat,  
tethered in the Willow Cove.
  
He remembered when he first saw Rose, for that must have been  
when he began to love her, though he was only fourteen and quite  
unconscious that the first seed had been dropped in the rich soil  
of his boyish heart.
  
He was seated on the kerosene barrel in the Edgewood post-office,  
which was also the general country store, where newspapers,  
letters, molasses, nails, salt codfish, hairpins, sugar, liver  
pills, canned goods, beans, and ginghams dwelt in genial  
proximity. When she entered, just a little pink-and-white slip  
of a thing with a tin pail in her hand and a sunbonnet falling  
off her wavy hair, Stephen suddenly stopped swinging his feet.  
She gravely announced her wants, reading them from a bit of  
paper,--1 quart molasses, 1 package ginger, 1 lb. cheese, 2  
pairs shoe laces, 1 card shirt buttons.
  
While the storekeeper drew off the molasses she exchanged shy  
looks with Stephen, who, clean, well-dressed, and carefully  
mothered as he was, felt all at once uncouth and awkward, rather  
as if he were some clumsy lout pitchforked into the presence of a  
fairy queen. He offered her the little bunch of bachelor's  
buttons he held in his hand, augury of the future, had he known  
it,--and she accepted them with a smile. She dropped her  
memorandum; he picked it up, and she smiled again, doing still  
more fatal damage than in the first instance. No words were  
spoken, but Rose, even at ten, had less need of them than most of  
her sex, for her dimples, aided by dancing eyes, length of  
lashes, and curve of lips, quite took the place of conversation.  
The dimples tempted, assented, denied, corroborated, deplored,  
protested, sympathized, while the intoxicated beholder cudgeled  
his brain for words or deeds which should provoke and evoke more  
and more dimples.
  
The storekeeper hung the molasses pail over Rose's right arm and  
tucked the packages under her left, and as he opened the mosquito  
netting door to let her pass out she looked back at Stephen,  
perched on the kerosene barrel. Just a little girl, a little  
glance, a little dimple, and Stephen was never quite the same  
again. The years went on, and the boy became man, yet no other  
image had ever troubled the deep, placid waters of his heart.  
Now, after many denials, the hopes and longings of his nature had  
been answered, and Rose had promised to marry him. He would  
sacrifice his passion for logging and driving in the future, and  
become a staid farmer and man of affairs, only giving himself a  
river holiday now and then. How still and peaceful it was under  
the trees, and how glad his mother would be to think that the old  
farm would wake from its sleep, and a woman's light foot be heard  
in the sunny kitchen!
  
Heaven was full of silent stars, and there was a moonglade on the  
water that stretched almost from him to Rose. His heart embarked  
on that golden pathway and sailed on it to the farther shore.  
The river was free of logs, and under the light of the moon it  
shone like a silver mirror. The soft wind among the fir branches  
breathed Rose's name; the river, rippling against the shore,  
sang, "Rose;" and as Stephen sat there dreaming of the future,  
his dreams, too, could have been voiced in one word, and that  
word " Rose."   
  
  
  
THE LITTLE HOUSE  
  
The autumn days flew past like shuttles in a loom. The river  
reflected the yellow foliage of the white birch and the scarlet  
of the maples. The wayside was bright with goldenrod, with the  
red tassels of the sumac, with the purple frost-flower and  
feathery clematis.
  
If Rose was not as happy as Stephen, she was quietly content, and  
felt that she had more to be grateful for than most girls, for  
Stephen surprised her with first one evidence and then another of  
thoughtful generosity. In his heart of hearts he felt that Rose  
was not wholly his, that she reserved, withheld something; and it  
was the subjugation of this rebellious province that he sought.  
He and Rose had agreed to wait a year for their marriage, in  
which time Rose's cousin would finish school and be ready to live  
with the old people; meanwhile Stephen had learned that his  
maiden aunt would be glad to come and keep house for Rufus. The  
work at the River Farm was too hard for a girl, so he had  
persuaded himself of late, and the house was so far from the  
village that Rose was sure to be lonely. He owned a couple of  
acres between his place and the Edgewood bridge, and here, one  
afternoon only a month after their engagement, he took Rose to  
see the foundations of a little house he was building for her.  
It was to be only a story-and-a-half cottage of six small rooms,  
the two upper chambers to be finished off later on. Stephen had  
placed it well back from the road, leaving space in front for  
what was to be a most wonderful arrangement of flower-beds, yet  
keeping a strip at the back, on the river-brink, for a small  
vegetable garden. There had been a house there years before--  
so many years that the blackened ruins were entirely overgrown;  
but a few elms and an old apple-orchard remained to shade the new  
dwelling and give welcome to the coming inmates.
  
Stephen had fifteen hundred dollars in bank, he could turn his  
hand to almost anything, and his love was so deep that Rose's  
plumb-line had never sounded bottom; accordingly he was able,  
with the help of two steady workers, to have the roof on before  
the first of November. The weather was clear and fine, and by  
Thanksgiving clapboards, shingles, two coats of brown paint, and  
even the blinds had all been added. This exhibition of reckless  
energy on Stephen's part did not wholly commend itself to the  
neighborhood.
  
"Steve's too turrible spry," said Rose's grandfather; "he'll trip  
himself up some o' these times."  
  
"You never will," remarked his better half, sagely.
  
"The resks in life come along fast enough, without runnin' to  
meet 'em," continued the old man. "There's good dough in Rose,  
but it ain't more'n half riz. Let somebody come along an' drop  
in a little more yeast, or set the dish a little mite nearer the  
stove, an' you'll see what'll happen."  
  
"Steve's kept house for himself some time, an' I guess he knows  
more about bread-makin' than you do."  
  
"There don't nobody know more'n I do about nothin', when my  
pipe's drawin' real good an' nobody's thornin' me to go to work,"  
replied Mr. Wiley; "but nobody's willin' to take the advice of a  
man that's seen the world an' lived in large places, an' the  
risin' generation is in a turrible hurry. I don' know how 't is:  
young folks air allers settin' the clock forrard an' the old ones  
puttin' it back."  
  
"Did you ketch anything for dinner when you was out this  
mornin'?" asked his wife. "No, I fished an' fished, till I was  
about  ready to drop, an' I did git a few shiners, but land, they  
wa'n't as big as the worms I was ketchin' 'em with, so I pitched  
'em back in the water an' quit."  
  
During the progress of these remarks Mr. Wiley opened the door  
under the sink, and from beneath a huge iron pot drew a round  
tray loaded with a glass pitcher and half a dozen tumblers, which  
he placed carefully on the kitchen table.
  
"This is the last day's option I've got on this lemonade-set," he  
said, "an' if I'm goin'to Biddeford to-morrer I've got to make up  
my mind here an' now."  
   
With this observation he took off his shoes, climbed in his  
stocking feet to the vantage ground of a kitchen chair, and  
lifted a stone china pitcher from a corner of the highest  
cupboard shelf where it had been hidden.
  
"This lemonade's gittin' kind o' dusty," he complained, "I  
cal'lated to hev a kind of a spree on it when I got through  
choosin' Rose's weddin' present, but I guess the pig'll hev to  
help me out."  
  
The old man filled one of the glasses from the pitcher, pulled up  
the kitchen shades to the top,put both hands in his pockets, and  
walked solemnly round the table, gazing at his offering from  
every possible point of view.
  
There had been three lemonade sets in the window of a Biddeford  
crockery store when Mr. Wiley chanced to pass by, and he had  
brought home the blue and green one on approval.
  
To the casual eye it would have appeared as quite uniquely  
hideous until the red and yellow or the purple and orange ones  
had been seen; after that, no human being could have made a  
decision, where each was so unparalleled in its ugliness, and Old  
Kennebec's confusion of mind would have been perfectly understood  
by the connoisseur.
  
"How do you like it with the lemonade in, mother?" he inquired  
eagerly. "The thing that plagues me most is that the red an'  
yaller one I hed home last week lights up better'n this, an' I  
believe I'll settle on that; for as I was thinkin' last night in  
bed, lemonade is mostly an evenin' drink an' Rose won't be usin'  
the set much by daylight. Root beer looks the han'somest in this  
purple set, but Rose loves lemonade better'n beer, so I guess  
I'll pack up this one an' change it to-morrer. Mebbe when I get  
it out o' sight an' give the lemonade to the pig I'll be easier  
in my mind."  
  
In the opinion of the community at large Stephen's forehandedness  
in the matter of preparations for his marriage was imprudence,  
and his desire for neatness and beauty flagrant extravagance.  
The house itself was a foolish idea, it was thought, but there  
were extenuating circumstances, for the maiden aunt really needed  
a home, and Rufus was likely to marry before long and take his  
wife to the River Farm. It was to be hoped in his case that he  
would avoid the snares of beauty and choose a good stout girl who  
would bring the dairy back to what it was in Mrs. Waterman's  
time.
  
All winter long Stephen labored on the inside of the cottage,  
mostly by himself. He learned all trades in succession, Love  
being his only master. He had many odd days to spare from his  
farm work, and if he had not found days he would have taken  
nights. Scarcely a nail was driven without Rose's advice; and  
when the plastering was hard and dry, the wall-papers were the  
result of weeks of consultation.
  
Among the quiet joys of life there is probably no other so deep,  
so sweet, so full of trembling hope and delight, as the building  
and making of a home,--a home where two lives are to be merged  
in one and flow on together, a home full of mysterious and  
delicious possibilities, hidden in a future which is always  
rose-colored.  
  
Rose's sweet little nature broadened under Stephen's influence;  
but she had her moments of discontent and unrest, always followed  
quickly by remorse.  
  
At the Thanksgiving sociable some one had observed her turquoise  
engagement ring,--some one who said that such a hand was worthy  
of a diamond, that turquoises were a pretty color, but that there  
was only one stone for an engagement ring, and that was a  
diamond. At the Christmas dance the same some one had said her  
waltzing would make her "all the rage" in Boston. She wondered  
if it were true, and wondered whether, if she had not promised to  
marry Stephen, some splendid being from a city would have  
descended from his heights, bearing diamonds in his hand. Not  
that she would have accepted them; she only wondered. These  
disloyal thoughts came seldom, and she put them resolutely away,  
devoting herself with all the greater assiduity to her muslin  
curtains and ruffled pillow-shams. Stephen, too, had his  
momentary pangs. There were times when he could calm his doubts  
only by working on the little house. The mere sight of the  
beloved floors and walls and ceilings comforted his heart, and  
brought him good cheer.
  
The winter was a cold one, so bitterly cold that even the rapid  
water at the Gray Rock was a mass of curdled yellow ice,  
something that had only occurred once or twice before within the  
memory of the oldest inhabitant.
   
It was also a very gay season for Pleasant River and Edgewood.  
Never had there been so many card-parties, sleigh rides and  
tavern dances, and never such wonderful skating. The river was  
one gleaming, glittering thoroughfare of ice from Milliken's  
Mills to the dam at the  Edgewood bridge. At sundown bonfires  
were built here and there on the mirror like surface, and all the  
young people from the neighboring villages gathered on the ice;  
while detachments of merry, rosycheeked boys and girls, those who  
preferred coasting, met at the top of Brigadier Hill, from which  
one could get a longer and more perilous slide than from any  
other point in the township.
  
Claude Merrill, in his occasional visits from Boston, was very  
much in evidence at the Saturday evening ice parties. He was not  
an artist at the sport himself, but he was especially proficient  
in the art of strapping on a lady's skates, and mur'muring--as  
he adjusted the last buckle,--"The prettiest foot and ankle on  
the river!"  It cannot be denied that this compliment gave secret  
pleasure to the fair village maidens who received it, but it was  
a pleasure accompanied by electric shocks of excitement. A  
girl's foot might perhaps be mentioned, if a fellow were daring  
enough, but the line was rigidly drawn at the ankle, which was  
not a part of the human frame ever alluded to in the polite  
society of Edgewood at that time.
  
Rose, in her red linsey-woolsey dress and her squirrel furs and  
cap, was the life of every gathering, and when Stephen took her  
hand and they glided up stream, alone together in the crowd, he  
used to wish that they might skate on and on up the crystal  
ice-path of the river, to the moon itself, whither it seemed to  
lead them.  
  
  
  
THE GARDEN OF EDEN  
  
But the Saco all this time was meditating of its surprises. The  
snapping cold weather and the depth to which the water was frozen  
were aiding it in its preparation for the greatest event of the  
season. On a certain gray Saturday in March, after a week of  
mild temperature, it began to rain as if, after months of  
snowing, it really enjoyed a new form of entertainment. Sunday  
dawned with the very flood-gates of heaven opening, so it seemed.  
All day long the river was rising under its miles of unbroken  
ice, rising at the threatening rate of four inches an hour.
  
Edgewood went to bed as usual that night, for the bridge at that  
point was set too high to be carried away by freshets, but at  
other villages whose bridges were in less secure position there  
was little sleep and much anxiety.
  
At midnight a cry was heard from the men watching at Milliken's  
Mills. The great ice jam had parted from Rolfe's Island and was  
swinging out into the open, pushing everything before it. All  
the able-bodied men in the village turned out of bed, and with  
lanterns in hand began to clear the stores and mills, for it  
seemed that everything near the river banks must go before that  
avalanche of ice.
  
Stephen and Rufus were there helping to save the property of  
their friends and neighbors; Rose and Mite Shapley had stayed the  
night with a friend, and all three girls were shivering with fear  
and excitement as they stood near the bridge, watching the  
never-to-be-forgtten sight. It is needless to say that the  
Crambry family was on hand, for whatever instincts they may have  
lacked, the instinct for being on the spot when anything was  
happening, was present in them to the most remarkable extent.  
The town was supporting them in modest winter quarters somewhat  
nearer than Killick to the centre of civilization, and the first  
alarm brought them promptly to the scene, Mrs. Crambry remarking  
at intervals: "If I'd known there'd be so many out I'd ought to  
have worn my bunnit; but I ain't got no bunnit, an' if I had they  
say I ain't got no head to wear it on!"  
  
By the time the jam neared the falls it had grown with its  
accumulations, until it was made up of tier after tier of huge  
ice cakes, piled side by side and one upon another, with heaps of  
trees and branches and drifting lumber holding them in place.  
Some of the blocks stood erect and towered like icebergs, and  
these, glittering in the lights of the twinkling lanterns, pushed  
solemnly forward, cracking, crushing, and cutting everything in  
their way. When the great mass neared the planing mill on the  
east shore the girls covered their eyes, expecting to hear the  
crash of the falling building; but, impelled by the force of some  
mysterious current, it shook itself ponderously, and then, with  
one magnificent movement, slid up the river bank, tier following  
tier in grand confusion. This left a water way for the main  
drift; the ice broke in every direction, and down, down, down,  
from Bonnie Eagle and Moderation swept the harvest of the winter  
freezing. It came thundering over the dam, bringing boats,  
farming implements, posts, supports, and every sort of floating  
lumber with it; and cutting under the flour mill, tipped it  
cleverly over on its side and went crashing on its way down  
river. At Edgewood it pushed colossal blocks of ice up the banks  
into the roadway, piling them end upon end ten feet in air.  
Then, tearing and rumbling and booming through the narrows, it  
covered the intervale at Pleasant Point and made a huge ice  
bridge below Union Falls, a bridge so solid that it stood there  
for days, a sight for all the neighboring villages.
  
This exciting event would have forever set apart this winter from  
all others in Stephen's memory, even had it not been also the  
winter when he was building a house for his future wife. But  
afterwards, in looking back on the wild night of the ice freshet,  
Stephen remembered that Rose's manner was strained and cold and  
evasive, and that when he had seen her talking with Claude  
Merrill, it had seemed to him that that whippersnapper had looked  
at her as no honorable man in Edgewood ever looked at an engaged  
girl. He recalled his throb of gratitude that Claude lived at a  
safe distance, and his subsequent pang of remorse at doubting,  
for an instant, Rose's fidelity.
  
So at length April came, the Saco was still high, turbid, and  
angry, and the boys were waiting at Limington Falls for the  
"Ossipee drive" to begin. Stephen joined them there, for he was  
restless, and the river called him, as it did every spring. Each  
stubborn log that he encountered gave him new courage and power of  
overcoming. The rush of the water, the noise and roar and dash,  
the exposure and danger, all made the blood run in his veins like  
new wine. When he came back to the farm, all the cobwebs had been  
blown from his brain, and his first interview with Rose was so  
intoxicating that he went immediately to Portland, and bought, in  
a kind of secret penitence for his former fears, a pale pink-flowered  
wall-paper for the bedroom in the new home. It had once been voted  
down by the entire advisory committee. Mrs. Wiley said pink was  
foolish and was always sure to fade; and the border, being a mass of  
solid roses, was five cents a yard, virtually a prohibitive  
price. Mr. Wiley said he "should hate to hev a spell of sickness  
an' lay abed in a room where there was things growin' all over  
the place."  He thought "rough-plastered walls, where you could  
lay an' count the spots where the roof leaked, was the most  
entertainin' in sickness."  Rose had longed for the lovely  
pattern, but had sided dutifully with the prudent majority, so  
that it was with a feeling of unauthorized and illegitimate joy  
that Stephen papered the room at night, a few strips at a time.
  
On the third evening, when he had removed all signs of his work,  
he lighted two kerosene lamps and two candles, finding the  
effect, under this illumination, almost too brilliant and  
beautiful for belief. Rose should never see it now, he  
determined, until the furniture was in place. They had already  
chosen the kitchen and bedroom things, though they would not be  
needed for some months; but the rest was to wait until summer,  
when there would be the hay-money to spend.
  
Stephen did not go back to the River Farm till one o'clock that  
night; the pink bedroom held him in fetters too powerful to  
break. It looked like the garden of Eden, he thought. To be  
sure, it was only fifteen feet square; Eden might have been a  
little larger, possibly, but otherwise the pink bedroom had every  
advantage. The pattern of roses growing on a frellis was  
brighter than any flower-bed in June; and the border--well, if  
the border had been five dollars a foot Stephen would not have  
grudged the money when he saw the twenty running yards of rosy  
bloom rioting under the white ceiling.
  
Before he blew out the last light he raised it high above his  
head and took one fond, final look. "It's the only place I ever  
saw," he thought, "that is pretty enough for her. She will look  
just as if she was growing here with all the other flowers, and I  
shall always think of it as the garden of Eden. I wonder, if I  
got the license and the ring and took her by surprise, whether  
she'd be married in June instead of August? I could be all ready  
if I could only persuade her."  
  
At this moment Stephen touched the summit of happiness; and it is  
a curious coincidence that as he was dreaming in his garden of  
Eden, the serpent, having just arrived at Edgewood, was sleeping  
peacefully at the house of Mrs. Brooks.
  
It was the serpent's fourth visit that season, and he explained  
to inquiring friends that his former employer had sold the  
business, and that the new management, while reorganizing, had  
determined to enlarge the premises, the three clerks who had been  
retained having two weeks' vacation with half pay.
  
It is extraordinary how frequently "wise serpents" are retained  
by the management on half, or even full, salary, while the  
services of the "harmless doves" are dispensed with, and they are  
set free to flutter where they will.
  
  
  
THE SERPENT  
  
Rose Wiley had the brightest eyes in Edgewood. It was impossible  
to look at her without realizing that her physical sight was  
perfect. What mysterious species of blindness is it that  
descends, now and then, upon human creatures, and renders them  
incapable of judgment or discrimination?
  
Claude Merrill was a glove salesman in a Boston fancy-goods  
store. The calling itself is undoubtedly respectable, and it is  
quite conceivable that a man can sell gloves and still be a man;  
but Claude Merrill was a manikin. He inhabited a very narrow  
space behind a very short counter, but to him it seemed the earth  
and the fullness thereof.
  
When, irreproachably neat and even exquisite in dress, he gave a  
Napoleonic glance at his array of glove-boxes to see if the  
female assistant had put them in proper order for the day; when,  
with that wonderful eye for detail that had wafted him to his  
present height of power, he pounced upon the powder-sprinklers  
and found them, as he expected, empty; when, with masterly  
judgment, he had made up and ticketed a basket of misfits and odd  
sizes to attract the eyes of women who were their human  
counterparts, he felt himself bursting with the pride and pomp of  
circumstance. His cambric handkerchief adjusted in his coat with  
the monogram corner well displayed, a last touch to the carefully  
trained lock on his forehead, and he was ready for his customers.
  
"Six, did you say, miss? I should have thought five and three  
quarters--Attend to that gentleman, Miss Dir, please; I am very  
busy.
  
"Six-and-a-half gray suede? Here they are, an exquisite shade.  
Shall I try them on? The right hand, if you will. Perhaps you'd  
better remove your elegant ring; I shouldn't like to have  
anything catch in the setting."  
  
"Miss Dir! Six-and-a-half black glace--upper shelf, third box  
--for this lady. She's in a hurry. We shall see you often  
after this, I hope, madam."  
  
"No; we don't keep silk or lisle gloves. We have no call for  
them; our customers prefer kid."  
  
Oh, but he was in his element, was Claude Merrill; though the  
glamour that surrounded him in the minds of the Edgewood girls  
did not emanate wholly from his finicky little person: something  
of it was the glamour that belonged to Boston,--remote,  
fashionable, gay, rich, almost inaccessible Boston, which none  
could see without the expenditure of five or six dollars in  
railway fare, with the added extravagance of a night in a hotel,  
if one would explore it thoroughly and come home possessed of all  
its illimitable treasures of wisdom and experience.
  
When Claude came to Edgewood for a Sunday, or to spend a vacation  
with his aunt, he brought with him something of the magic of a  
metropolis. Suddenly, to Rose's eye, Stephen looked larger and  
clumsier, his shoes were not the proper sort, his clothes were  
ordinary, his neckties were years behind the fashion. Stephen's  
dancing, compared with Claude's, was as the deliberate motion of  
an ox to the hopping of a neat little robin. When Claude took a  
girl's hand in the "grand right-and-left," it was as if he were  
about to try on a delicate glove; the manner in which he "held  
his lady" in the polka or schottische made her seem a queen.  
Mite Shapley was so affected by it that when Rufus attempted to  
encircle her for the mazurka she exclaimed, "Don't act as if you  
were spearing logs, Rufus!"   
  
Of the two men, Stephen had more to say, but Claude said more. He  
was thought brilliant in conversation; but what wonder, when one  
considered his advantages and his dazzling experiences! He had  
customers who were worth their thousands; ladies whose fingers  
never touched dish-water; ladies who wouldn't buy a glove of  
anybody else if they went bare-handed to the grave. He lived  
with his sister Maude Arthurlena in a house where there were  
twenty-two other boarders who could be seated at meals all at the  
same time, so immense was the dining-room. He ate his dinner at  
a restaurant daily, and expended twenty-five cents for it without  
blenching. He went to the theatre once a week, and was often  
accompanied by "lady friends" who were "elegant dressers."  
  
In a moment of wrath Stephen had called him a "counter-jumper,"  
but it was a libel. So short and rough a means of exit from his  
place of power was wholly beneath Claude's dignity. It was with  
a "Pardon me, Miss Dir," that, the noon hour having arrived, he  
squeezed by that slave and victim, and raising the hinged board  
that separated his kingdom from that of the ribbon department,  
passed out of the store, hat in hand, serene in the consciousness  
that though other clerks might nibble luncheon from a brown paper  
bag, he would speedily be indulging in an expensive repast; and  
Miss Dir knew it, and it was a part of his almost invincible  
attraction for her.
  
It seemed flying in the face of Providence to decline the  
attentions of such a gorgeous butterfly of fashion simply because  
one was engaged to marry another man at some distant day.
  
All Edgewood femininity united in saying that there never was  
such a perfect gentleman as Claude Merrill; and during the time  
when his popularity was at its height Rose lost sight of the fact  
that Stephen could have furnished the stuff for a dozen Claudes  
and have had enough left for an ordinary man besides.
  
April gave place to May, and a veil hung between the lovers,--  
an intangible, gossamer-like thing, not to be seen with the naked  
eye, but, oh! so plainly to be felt. Rose hid herself thankfully  
behind it, while Stephen had not courage to lift a corner. She  
had twice been seen driving with Claude Merrill--that Stephen  
knew; but she had explained that there were errands to be done,  
that her grandfather had taken the horse, and that Mr. Merrill's  
escort had been both opportune and convenient for these practical  
reasons. Claude was everywhere present, the centre of  
attraction, the observed of all observers. He was irresistible,  
contagious, almost epidemic. Rose was now gay, now silent; now  
affectionate, now distant, now coquettish; in fine, everything  
that was capricious, mysterious, agitating, incomprehensible.
  
One morning Alcestis Crambry went to the post-office for Stephen  
and brought him back the newspapers and letters. He had hung  
about the River Farm so much that Stephen finally gave him bed  
and food in exchange for numberless small errands. Rufus was  
temporarily confined in a dark room with some strange pain and  
trouble in his eyes, and Alcestis proved of use in many ways. He  
had always been Rose's slave, and had often brought messages and  
notes from the Brier Neighborhood, so that when Stephen saw a  
folded note among the papers his heart gave a throb of  
anticipation.
  
The note was brief, and when he had glanced through it he said:  
"This is not mine, Alcestis; it belongs to Miss Rose. Go  
straight back and give it to her as you were told; and another  
time keep your wits about you, or I'll send you back to Killick."  
  
Alcestis Crambry's ideas on all subjects were extremely vague.  
Claude Merrill had given him a letter for Rose, but his notion  
was that anything that belonged to her belonged to Stephen, and  
the Waterman place was much nea'rer than the Wileys', particularly  
at dinner-time!
  
When the boy had slouched away, Stephen sat under the apple tree,  
now a mass of roseate bloom, and buried his face in his hands.
  
It was not precisely a love-letter that he had read, nevertheless  
it blackened the light of the sun for him. Claude asked Rose to  
meet him anywhere on the road to the station and to take a little  
walk, as he was leaving that afternoon and could not bear to say  
good-by to her in the presence of her grandmother. "Under the  
circumstances," he wrote, deeply underlining the words, "I cannot  
remain a moment longer in Edgewood, where I have been so happy  
and so miserable!"  He did not refer to the fact that the time  
limit on his return-ticket expired that day, for his dramatic  
instinct told him that such sordid matters have no place in  
heroics.
  
Stephen sat motionless under the tree for an hour, deciding on  
some plan of action.
  
He had work at the little house, but he did not dare go there  
lest he should see the face of dead Love looking from the windows  
of the pink bedroom; dead Love, cold, sad, merciless. His cheeks  
burned as he thought of the marriage license and the gold ring  
hidden away upstairs in the drawer of his shaving stand. What a  
romantic fool he had been, to think he could hasten the glad day  
by a single moment! What a piece of boyish folly it had been,  
and how it shamed him in his own eyes! When train time drew near  
he took his boat and paddled down stream. If for the Finland  
lover's reindeer there was but one path in all the world, and  
that the one that led to Her, so it was for Stephen's canoe,  
which, had it been set free on the river by day or by night,  
might have floated straight to Rose.
  
He landed at the usual place, a bit of sandy shore near the Wiley  
house, and walked drearily up the bank through the woods. Under  
the shade of the pines the white stars of the hepatica glistened  
and the pale anemones were coming into bloom. Partridge-berries  
glowed red under their glossy leaves, and clumps of violets  
sweetened the air. Squirrels chattered, woodpeckers tapped,  
thrushes sang; but Stephen was blind and deaf to all the sweet  
harbingers of spring.
  
Just then he heard voices, realizing with a throb of delight  
that, at any rate, Rose had not left home to meet Claude, as he  
had asked her to do. Looking through the branches, he saw the  
two standing together, Mrs. Brooks's horse; with the offensive  
trunk in the back of the wagon, being hitched to a tree near by.  
There was nothing in the tableau to stir Stephen to fury, but he  
read between the lines and suffered as he read--suffered and  
determined to sacrifice himself if he must, so that Rose could  
have what she wanted, this miserable apology for a man. He had  
never been the husband for Rose; she must take her place in a  
larger community, worthy of her beauty and charm.
  
Claude was talking and gesticulating ardently. Rose's head was  
bent and the tears were rolling down her cheeks. Suddenly Claude  
raised his hat, and with a passionate gesture of renunciation  
walked swiftly to the wagon, and looking back once, drove off  
with the utmost speed of which the Brooks's horse was capable,--  
Rose waving him a farewell with one hand and wiping her eyes with  
the other.
  
  
  
THE TURQUOISE RING  
  
Stephen stood absolutely still in front of the opening in the  
trees, and as Rose turned she met him face to face. She had  
never dreamed his eyes could be so stern, his mouth so hard, and  
she gave a sob like a child.
  
"You seem to be in trouble," Stephen said in a voice so cold she  
thought it could not be his.
  
"I am not in trouble, exactly," Rose stammered, concealing her  
discomfiture as well as possible. "I am a little unhappy because  
I have made some one else unhappy; and now that you know it, you  
will be unhappy too, and angry besides, I suppose, though you've  
seen everything there was to see."  
  
"There is no occasion for sorrow, Stephen said. "I didn't mean  
to break in on any interview; I came over to give you back your  
freedom. If you ever cared enough for me to marry me, the time  
has gone by. I am willing to own that I over-persuaded you, but  
I am not the man to take a girl against her inclinations, so we  
will say good-by and end the thing here and now. I can only wish  
--here his smothered rage at fate almost choked him--"that,  
when you were selecting another husband, you had chosen a whole  
man!"  
  
Rose quivered with the scorn of his tone. "Size isn't  
everything!" she blazed.
  
"Not in bodies, perhaps; but it counts for something in hearts  
and brains, and it is convenient to have a sense of honor that's  
at least as big as a grain of mustard-seed."  
  
"Claude Merrill is not dishonorable," Rose exclaimed impetuously;  
"or at least he isn't as bad as you think: he has never asked  
me to marry him."  
  
"Then he probably was not quite ready to speak, or perhaps you  
were not quite ready to hear," retorted Stephen, bitterly; "but  
don't let us have words,--there'll be enough to regret without  
adding those. I have seen, ever since New Year's, that you were  
not really happy or contented; only I wouldn't allow it to  
myself: I kept hoping against hope that I was mistaken. There  
have been times when I would have married you, willing or  
unwilling, but I didn't love you so well then; and now that  
there's another man in the case, it's different, and I'm strong  
enough to do the right thing. Follow your heart and be happy; in  
a year or two I shall be glad I had the grit to tell you so.  
Good-by, Rose!"  
  
Rose, pale with amazement, summoned all her pride, and drawing  
the turquoise engagement ring from her finger, handed it silently  
to Stephen, hiding her face as he flung it vehemently down the  
river-bank. His dull eyes followed it and half uncomprehendingly  
saw it settle and glisten in a nest of brown pine-needles. Then  
he put out his hand for a last clasp and strode away without a  
word.
  
Presently Rose heard first the scrape of his boat on the sand,  
then the soft sound of his paddles against the water, then  
nothing but the squirrels and the woodpeckers and the thrushes,  
then not even these,--nothing but the beating of her own heart.
  
She sat down heavily, feeling as if she were wide awake for the  
first time in many weeks. How had things come to this pass with  
her?
  
Claude Merrill had flattered her vanity and given her some  
moments of restlessness and dissatisfaction with her lot; but he  
had not until to-day really touched her heart or tempted her,  
even momentarily, from her allegiance to Stephen. His eyes had  
always looked unspeakable things; his voice had seemed to breathe  
feelings that he had never dared put in words; but to-day he had  
really stirred her, for although he had still been vague, it was  
easy to see that his love for her had passed all bounds of  
discretion. She remembered his impassioned farewells, his  
despair, his doubt as to whether he could forget her by plunging  
into the vortex of business, or whether he had better end it all  
in the river, as so many other broken-hearted fellows had done.  
She had been touched by his misery, even against her better  
judgment; and she had intended to confess it all to Stephen  
sometime, telling him that she should never again accept  
attentions from a stranger, lest a tragedy like this should  
happen twice in a lifetime.
  
She had imagined that Stephen would be his large-minded,  
great-hearted, magnanimous self, and beg her to forget this  
fascinating will-o'the-wisp by resting in his deeper, serener  
love. She had meant to be contrite and faithful, praying nightly  
that poor Claude might live down his present anguish, of which  
she had been the innocent cause.
  
Instead, what had happened? She had been put altogether in the  
wrong. Stephen had almost cast her off, and that, too, without  
argument. He had given her her liberty before she had asked for  
it, taking it for granted, without question, that she desired to  
be rid of him. Instead of comforting her in her remorse, or  
sympathizing with her for so nobly refusing to shine in Claude's  
larger world of Boston, Stephen had assumed that she was disloyal  
in every particular.
  
And pray how was she to cope with such a disagreeable and  
complicated situation?
  
It would not be long before the gossips rolled under their  
tongues the delicious morsel of a broken engagement, and sooner  
or later she must brave the displeasure of her grandmother.
  
And the little house--that was worse than anything. Her tears  
flowed faster as she thought of Stephen's joy in it, of his  
faithful labor, of the savings he had invested in it. She hated  
and despised her self when she thought of the house, and  for the  
first time in her life she realized the limitations of her  
nature, the poverty of her ideals.
  
What should she do? She had lost Stephen and ruined his life.  
Now, in order that she need not blight a second  career, must she  
contrive to return Claude's love! To be sure, she thought, it  
seemed indecent to marry any other man than Stephen, when they  
had built a house together, and chosen wall-papers, and a kitchen  
stove, and dining-room chairs; but  was it not the only way to  
evade the difficulties?
  
Suppose that Stephen, in a fit of pique, should ask somebody else  
to share the new cottage?
  
As this dreadful possibility came into view, Rose's sobs actually  
frightened the birds and the squirrels. She paced back and forth  
under the trees, wondering how she could have been engaged to a  
man for eight months and know so little about him as she seemed  
to know about Stephen Waterman to-day. Who would have believed  
he could be so autocratic, so severe, so unapproachable! Who  
could have foreseen that she, Rose Wiley, would ever be given up  
to another man,--handed over as coolly as if she had been a  
bale of cotton? She wanted to return Claude Merrill's love  
because it was the only way out of the tangle; but at the moment  
she almost hated him for making so much trouble, for hurting  
Stephen, for abasing her in her own eyes, and, above all, for  
giving her rustic lover the chance of impersonating an injured  
emperor.
  
It did not simplify the situation to have Mite Shapley come in  
during the evening and run upstairs, uninvited, to sit on the  
toot of her bed and chatter.
  
Rose had closed her blinds and lay in the dark, pleading a  
headache.
               
Mite was in high feather. She had met Claude Merrill going to  
the station that afternoon. He was much too early for the train,  
which the station agent reported to be behind time, so he had  
asked her to take a drive. She didn't know how it happened, for  
he looked at his watch every now and then; but, anyway, they got  
to laughing and "carrying on," and when they came back to the  
station the train had gone. Wasn't that the greatest joke of  
the season? What did Rose suppose they did next?
  
Rose didn't know and didn't care; her head ached too badly.
  
Well, they had driven to Wareham, and Claude had hired a livery  
team there, and had been taken into Portland with his trunk, and  
she had brought Mrs. Brooks's horse back to Edgewood. Wasn't  
that ridiculous? And hadn't she cut out Rose where she least  
expected?  
  
Rose was distinctly apathetic, and Mite Shapley departed after a  
very brief call, leaving behind her an entirely new train of  
thought.
  
If Claude Merrill were so love-blighted that he could only by the  
greatest self-control keep from flinging himself into the river,  
how could he conceal his sufferings so completely from Mite  
Shapley,--little shallow-pated, scheming coquette?
  
"So that pretty Merrill feller has gone, has he, mother?"  
inquired Old Kennebec that night, as he took off his wet shoes  
and warmed his feet at the kitchen oven. "Well, it ain't a mite  
too soon. I allers distrust that pink-an'-white, rosy-posy kind  
of a man. One of the most turrible things that ever happened in  
Gard'ner was brought about by jest sech a feller. Mothers hedn't  
hardly ought to name their boy babies Claude without they  
expect 'em to play the dickens with the girls. I don' know  
nothin' 'bout the fust Claude, there ain't none of 'em in the  
Bible, air they, but whoever he was, I bate ye he hed a deceivin'  
tongue. If it hedn't be'n for me, that Claude in Gard'ner would  
'a' run away with my brother's fust wife; an' I'll tell ye jest  
how I contrived to put a spoke in his wheel."  
  
But Mrs. Wiley, being already somewhat familiar with the  
circumstances, had taken her candle and retired to her virtuous  
couch.
  
  
  
ROSE SEES THE WORLD  
  
Was this the world, after all? Rose asked herself; and, if so,  
what was amiss with it, and where was the charm, the  
bewilderment, the intoxication, the glamour!
  
She had been glad to come to Boston, for the last two weeks in  
Edgewood had proved intolerable. She had always been a favorite  
heretofore, from the days when the boys fought for the privilege  
of dragging her sled up the hills, and filling her tiny mitten  
with peppermints, down to the year when she came home from the  
Wareham Female Seminary, an acknowledged belle and beauty.  
Suddenly she had felt her popularity dwindling. There was no  
real change in the demeanor of her acquaintances, but there was a  
certain subtle difference of atmosphere. Everybody sympathized  
tacitly with Stephen, and she did not wonder, for there were  
times when she secretly took his part against herself. Only a  
few candid friends had referred to the rupture openly in  
conversation, but these had been bluntin their disapproval.
  
It seemed part of her ill fortune that just at this time Rufus  
should be threatened with partial blindness, and that Stephen's  
heart, already sore, should be torn with new anxieties. She  
could hardly bear to see the doctor's carriage drive by day after  
day, and hear night after night that Rufus was unresigned,  
melancholy, half mad; while Stephen, as the doctor said, was  
brother, mother, and father in one, as gentle as a woman, as firm  
as Gibraltar.
  
These foes to her peace of mind all came from within; but without  
was the hourly reproach of her grandmother, whose scorching  
tongue touched every sensitive spot in the girl's nature and  
burned it like fire.
  
Finally a way of escape opened. Mrs. Wealthy Brooks, who had  
always been rheumatic, grew suddenly worse. She had heard of a  
"magnetic" physician in Boston, also of one who used electricity  
with wonderful effect, and she announced her intention of taking  
both treatments impartially and alternately. The neighbors were  
quite willing that Wealthy Ann Brooks should spend the deceased  
Ezra's money in any way she pleased,--she had earned it,  
goodness knows, by living with him for twenty-five years,--but  
before the day for her departure arrived her right arm and knee  
became so much more painful that it was impossible for her to  
travel alone.
  
At this juncture Rose was called upon to act as nurse and  
companion in a friendly way. She seized the opportunity hungrily  
as a way out of her present trouble; but, knowing what Mrs.
Brooks's temper was in time of health, she could see clearly what  
it was likely to prove when pain and anguish wrung the brow.
  
Rose had been in Boston now for some weeks, and she was sitting  
in the Joy Street boarding-house,--Joy Street, forsooth! It  
was nearly bedtime, and she was looking out upon a huddle of  
roofs and back yards, upon a landscape filled with clothes-lines,  
ash-barrels, and ill-fed cats. There were no sleek country  
tabbies, with the memory in their eyes of tasted cream, nothing  
but city-born, city-bred, thin, despairing cats of the pavement,  
cats no more forlorn than Rose herself.
  
She had "seen Boston," for she had accompanied Mrs. Brooks in the  
horse-cars daily to the two different temples of healing where  
that lady worshipped and offered sacrifices. She had also gone  
with Maude Arthurlena to Claude Merrill's store to buy pair of  
gloves, and had overheard Miss Dir (the fashionable  
"lady-assistant" before mentioned) say to Miss Brackett of the  
ribbon department, that she thought Mr. Merrill must have worn  
his blinders that time he stayed so long in Edgewood. This bit  
of polished irony was unintelligible to Rose at first, but she  
mastered it after an hour's reflection. She wasn't looking her  
best that day, she knew; the cotton dresses that seemed so pretty  
at home were common and countrified here, and her best black  
cashmere looked cheap and shapeless beside Miss Dir's  
brilliantine. Miss Dir's figure was her strong point, and her  
dressmaker was particularly skillful in the arts of suggestion,  
concealment, and revelation. Beauty has its chosen backgrounds.  
Rose in white dimity, standing knee deep in her blossoming brier  
bushes, the river running at her feet, dark pine trees behind her  
graceful head, sounded depths and touched heights of harmony  
forever beyond the reach of the modish Miss Dir, but she was out  
of her element and suffered accordingly.
  
Rose had gone to walk with Claude one evening when she first  
arrived. He had shown her the State House and the Park Street  
Church, and sat with her on one of the benches in the Common  
until nearly ten. She knew that Mrs. Brooks had told her nephew  
of the broken engagement, but he made no reference to the matter,  
save to congratulate her that she was rid of a man who was so  
clumsy, so dull and behind the times, as Stephen Waterman, saying  
that he had always marveled she could engage herself to anybody  
who could insult her by offering her a turquoise ring.
  
Claude was very interesting that evening, Rose thought, but  
rather gloomy and unlike his former self. He referred to his  
grave responsibilities, to the frail health of Maude Arthurlena,  
and to the vicissitudes of business. He vaguely intimated that  
his daily life in the store was not so pleasant as it had been  
formerly; that there were "those" (he would speak no more  
plainly) who embarrassed him with undesired attentions, "those"  
who, without the smallest shadow of right, vexed him with petty  
jealousies.
  
Rose dared not ask questions on so delicate a topic, but she  
remembered in a flash Miss Dir's heavy eyebrows, snapping eyes,  
and high color. Claude seemed very happy that Rose had come to  
Boston, though he was surprised, knowing what a trial his aunt  
must be, now that she was so helpless. It was unfortunate, also,  
that Rose could not go on excursions without leaving his aunt  
alone, or he should have been glad to offer his escort. He  
pressed her hand when he left her at her door, telling her she  
could never realize what a comfort her friendship was to him;  
could never imagine how thankful he was that she had courageously  
freed herself from ties that in time would have made her  
wretched. His heart was full, he said, of feelings he dared not  
utter; but in the near future, when certain clouds had rolled by,  
he would unlock its treasures, and then--but no more to-night:  
he could not trust himself.
  
Rose felt as if she were assuming one of the characters in a  
mysterious romance, such as unfolded itself only in books or in  
Boston; but, thrilling as it was, it was nevertheless extremely  
unsatisfactory.
  
Convinced that Claude Merrill was passionately in love with her,  
one of her reasons for coming to Boston had been to fall more  
deeply in love with him, and thus heal some, at least, of the  
wounds she had inflicted. It may have been a foolish idea, but  
after three weeks it seemed still worse,--a useless one; for  
after several interviews she felt herself drifting farther and  
farther from Claude; and if he felt any burning ambition to make  
her his own, he certainly concealed it with admirable art. Given  
up, with the most offensive magnanimity, by Stephen, and not  
greatly desired by Claude,--that seemed the present status of  
proud Rose Wiley of the Brier Neighborhood.
  
It was June, she remembered, as she leaned out of the open  
window; at least it was June in Edgewood, and she supposed for  
convenience's sake they called it June in Boston. Not that it  
mattered much what the poor city prisoners called it. How  
beautiful the river would be at home, with the trees along the  
banks in full leaf! How she hungered and thirsted for the river,  
--to see it sparkle in the sunlight; to watch the moonglade  
stretching from one bank to the other; to hear the soft lap of  
the water on the shore, and the distant murmur of the falls at  
the bridge! And the Brier Neighborhood would be at its  
loveliest, for the wild roses were in blossom by now. And the  
little house! How sweet it must look under the shade of the  
elms, with the Saco rippling at the back! Was poor Rufus still  
lying in a darkened room, and was Stephen nursing him,--  
disappointed Stephen,--dear, noble old Stephen?
  
  
  
GOLD AND PINCHBECK  
  
Just then Mrs. Brooks groaned in the next room and called Rose,  
who went in to minister to her real needs, or to condole with her  
fancied ones, whichever course of action appeared to be the more  
agreeable at the moment.
  
Mrs. Brooks desired conversation, it seemed, or at least she  
desired an audience for a monologue, for she recognized no  
antiphonal obligations on the part of her listeners. The doctors  
were not doing her a speck of good, and she was just squandering  
money in a miserable boarding-house, when she might be enjoying  
poor health in her own home; and she didn't believe her hens  
were receiving proper care, and she had forgotten to pull down  
the shades in the spare room, and the sun would fade the carpet  
out all white before she got back, and she didn't believe Dr.
Smith's magnetism was any more use than a cat's foot, nor Dr.
Robinson's electricity any better than a bumblebee's buzz, and  
she had a great mind to go home and try Dr. Lord from Bonnie  
Eagle; and there was a letter for Rose on the bureau, which had  
come before supper, but the shiftless, lazy, worthless landlady  
had forgotten to send it up till just now.
  
The letter was from Mite Shapley, but Rose could read only half  
of it to Mrs. Brooks,--little beside the news that the Waterman  
barn, the finest barn in the whole township, had been struck by  
lightning and burned to the ground. Stephen was away at the  
time, having taken Rufus to Portland, where an operation on his  
eyes would shortly be performed at the hospital, and one of the  
neighbors was sleeping at the River Farm and taking care of the  
cattle; still the house might not have been saved but for one of  
Alcestis Crambry's sudden bursts of common sense, which occurred  
now quite regularly. He succeeded not only in getting the horses  
out of the stalls, but gave the alarm so promptly that the whole  
neighborhood was soon on the scene of action. Stephen was the  
only man, Mite reminded Rose, who ever had any patience with, or  
took any pains to teach, Alcestis, but he never could have  
expected to be rewarded in this practical way. The barn was only  
partly insured; and when she had met Stephen at the station next  
day, and condoled with him on his loss, he had said: "Oh, well,  
Mite, a little more or less doesn't make much difference just  
now."  
  
"The rest wouldn't interest you, Mrs. Brooks," said Rose,  
precipitately preparing to leave the room.
  
"Something about Claude, I suppose," ventured that astute lady.  
"I think Mite kind of fancied him. I don't believe he ever gave  
her any real encouragement; but he'd make love to a pump, Claude  
Merrill would; and so would his father before him. How my sister  
Abby made out to land him we never knew, for they said he'd  
proposed to every woman in the town of Bingham, not excepting the  
wooden Indian girl in front of the cigar store, and not one of  
'em but our Abby ever got a chance to name the day. Abby was as  
set as the everlastin' hills, and if she'd made up her mind to  
have a man he couldn't wriggle away from her nohow in the world.  
It beats all how girls do run after these slick-haired,  
sweet-tongued, Miss Nancy kind o' fellers, that ain't but little  
good as beaux an' worth less than nothing as husbands."  
  
Rose scarcely noticed what Mrs. Brooks said, she was too anxious  
to read the rest of Mite Shapley's letter in the quiet of her own  
room.
  
"Stephen looks thin and pale [so it ran on], but he does not  
allow anybody to sympathize with him. I think you ought to know  
something that I haven't told you before for fear of hurting your  
feelings; but if I were in your place I'd like to hear  
everything, and then you'll know how to act when you come home.  
Just after you left, Stephen plowed up all the land in front of  
your new house,--every inch of it, all up and down the road,  
between the fence and the front door-step,--and then he planted  
corn where you were going to have your flower-beds.
  
"He has closed all the blinds and hung a 'To Let' sign on the  
large elm at the gate. Stephen never was spiteful in his life,  
but this looks a little like spite. Perhaps he only wanted to  
save his self-respect and let people know, that everything  
between you was over forever. Perhaps he thought it would stop  
talk once and for all. But you won't mind, you lucky girl,  
staying nearly three months in Boston! [So Almira purled on in  
violet ink, with shaded letters.]  How I wish it had come my way,  
though I'm not good at rubbing rheumatic patients, even when they  
are his aunt. Is he as devoted as ever? And when will it be?  
How do you like the theatre?  Mother thinks you won't attend;  
but, by what he used to say, I am sure church members in Boston  
always go to amusements.
  
"Your loving friend,  
  
"Almira Shapley.
  
"P.S. They say Rufus's doctor's bills here, and the operation  
and hospital expenses in Portland, will mount up to five hundred  
dollars. Of course Stephen will be dreadfully hampered by the  
loss of his barn, and maybe he wants to let your house that was  
to be, because he really needs money. In that case the dooryard  
won't be very attractive to tenants, with corn planted right up  
to the steps--and no path left! It's two feet tall now, and by  
August (just when you were intending to move in) it will hide the  
front windows. Not that you'll care, with a diamond on your  
engagement finger!"  
  
The letter was more than flesh and blood could stand, and Rose  
flung herself on her bed to think and regret and repent, and, if  
possible, to sob herself to sleep.
  
She knew now that she had never admired and respected Stephen so  
much as at the moment when, under the reproach of his eyes, she  
had given him back his ring. When she left Edgewood and parted  
with him forever she had really loved him better than when she  
had promised to marry him.
  
Claude Merrill, on his native Boston heath, did not appear the  
romantic, inspiring figure he had once been in her eyes. A week  
ago she distrusted him; to-night she despised him.
  
What had happened to Rose was the dilation of her vision. She  
saw things under a wider sky and in a clearer light. Above all,  
her heart was wrung with pity for Stephen--Stephen, with no  
comforting woman's hand to help him in his sore trouble; Stephen,  
bearing his losses alone, his burdens and anxieties alone, his  
nursing and daily work alone. Oh, how she felt herself needed!  
Needed! that was the magic word that unlocked her better nature.  
"Darkness is the time for making roots and establishing plants,  
whether of the soil or of the soul," and all at once Rose had  
become a woman: a little one, perhaps, but a whole woman--and  
a bit of an angel, too, with healing in her wings. When and how  
had this metamorphosis come about? Last summer the fragile  
brier-rose had hung over the river and looked at its pretty  
reflection in the placid surface of the water. Its few buds and  
blossoms were so lovely, it sighed for nothing more. The changes  
in the plant had  been wrought secretly and silently. In some  
mysterious way, as common to soul as to plant life, the roots had  
gathered in more nourishment from the earth, they had stored up  
strength and force, and all at once there was a marvelous  
fructifying of the plant, hardiness of stalk, new shoots  
everywhere, vigorous leafage, and a shower of blossoms.
  
But everything was awry: Boston was a failure; Claude was a  
weakling and a flirt; her turquoise ring was lying on the  
riverbank; Stephen did not love her any longer; her flower-beds  
were plowed up and planted in corn; and the cottage that Stephen  
had built and she had furnished, that beloved cottage, was to  
let.
  
She was in Boston; but what did that amount to, after all? What  
was the State House to a bleeding heart, or the Old South Church  
to a pride wounded like hers?
  
At last she fell asleep, but it was only by stopping her ears to  
the noises of the city streets and making herself imagine the  
sound of the river rippling under her bedroom windows at home.  
The back yards of Boston faded, and in their place came the banks  
of the Saco, strewn with pine needles, fragrant with wild  
flowers. Then there was the bit of sunny beach, where Stephen  
moored his boat. She could hear the sound of his paddle. Boston  
lovers came a-courting in the horse-cars, but hers had floated  
down stream to her just at dusk in a birch-bark canoe, or  
sometimes, in the moonlight, on a couple of logs rafted together.
  
But it was all over now, and she could see only Stephen's stern  
face as he flung the despised turquoise ring down the river bank.
  
  
  
A COUNTRY CHEVALIER  
  
It was early in August when Mrs. Wealthy Brooks announced her  
speedy return from Boston to Edgewood.
  
"It's jest as well Rose is comin' back," said Mr. Wiley to his  
wife. "I never favored her goin' to Boston, where that rosyposy  
Claude feller is. When he was down here he was kep' kind o' tied  
up in a boxstall, but there he's caperin' loose round the  
pastur'."  
  
"I should think Rose would be ashamed to come back, after the way  
she's carried on," remarked Mrs. Wiley, "but if she needed  
punishment I guess she's got it bein' comp'ny-keeper to Wealthy  
Ann Brooks. Bein' a church member in good an' reg'lar standin',  
I s'pose Wealthy Ann'll go to  heaven, but I can only say that it  
would be a sight pleasanter place for a good many if she didn't."  
  
"Rose has be'n foolish an' flirty an' wrong-headed," allowed her  
grandfather; "but it won't do no good to treat her like a  
hardened criminile, same's you did afore she went away. She  
ain't hardly got her wisdom teeth cut, in love affairs! She  
ain't broke the laws of the State o' Maine, nor any o' the ten  
commandments; she ain't disgraced the family, an' there's a  
chance for her to reform, seein' as how she ain't twenty year old  
yet. I was turrible wild an' hot-headed myself afore you ketched  
me an' tamed me down."  
  
"You ain't so tame now as I wish you was," Mrs. Wiley replied  
testily.
  
"If you could smoke a clay pipe 'twould calm your nerves, mother,  
an' help you to git some philosophy inter you; you need a little  
philosophy turrible bad."  
  
"I need patience consid'able more," was Mrs. Wiley's withering  
retort.
  
"That's the way with folks," said Old Kennebec reflectively, as  
he went on peacefully puffing. "If you try to indoose 'em to  
take an int'rest in a bran'-new virtue, they won't look at it;  
but they'll run down a side street an' buy half a yard more o'  
some turrible old shopworn trait o' character that they've kep'  
in stock all their lives, an' that everybody's sick to death of.  
There was a man in Gard'ner"--  
  
But alas! the experiences of the Gardiner man, though told in the  
same delightful fashion that had won Mrs. Wiley's heart many  
years before, now fell upon the empty air. In these years of Old  
Kennebec's "anecdotage," his pipe was his best listener and his  
truest confidant.
  
Mr. Wiley's constant intercessions with his wife made Rose's  
home-coming somewhat easier, and the sight of her own room and  
belongings soothed her troubled spirit, but the days went on, and  
nothing happened to change the situation. She had lost a lover,  
that was all, and there were plenty more to choose from, or there  
always had been; but the only one she wanted was the one who made  
no sign. She used to think that she could twist Stephen around  
her little finger; that she had only to beckon to him and he  
would follow her to the ends of the earth. Now fear had entered  
her heart. She no longer felt sure, because she no longer felt  
worthy, of him, and feeling both uncertainty and unworthiness,  
her lips were sealed and she was rendered incapable of making any  
bid for forgiveness.
  
So the little world of Pleasant River went on, to all outward  
seeming, as it had ever gone. On one side of the stream a girl's  
heart was longing, and pining, and sickening, with hope deferred,  
and growing, too, with such astonishing rapidity that the very  
angels marveled! And on the other, a man's whole vision of life  
and duty was widening and deepening under the fructifying  
influence of his sorrow.
  
The corn waved high and green in front of the vacant riverside  
cottage, but Stephen sent no word or message to Rose. He had  
seen her once, but only from a distance. She seemed paler and  
thinner, he thought,--the result; probably, of her metropolitan  
gayeties. He heard no rumor of any engagement, and he wondered  
if it were possible that her love for Claude Merrill had not,  
after all, been returned in kind. This seemed a wild  
impossibility. His mind refused to entertain the supposition  
that any man on earth could resist falling in love with Rose, or,  
having fallen in, that he could ever contrive to climb out. So  
he worked on at his farm harder than ever, and grew soberer and  
more careworn daily. Rufus had never seemed so near and dear to  
him as in these weeks when he had lived under the shadow of  
threatened blindness. The burning of the barn and the strain  
upon their slender property brought the brothers together  
shoulder to shoulder.
  
"If you lose your girl, Steve," said the boy, "and I lose my  
eyesight, and we both lose the barn, why, t'll be us two against  
the world, for a spell!"  
  
The "To Let" sign on the little house was an arrant piece of  
hypocrisy. Nothing but the direst extremity could have caused  
him to allow an alien step on that sacred threshold. The plowing  
up of the flowerbeds and planting of the corn had served a double  
purpose. It showed the too curious public the finality of his  
break with Rose and her absolute freedom; it also prevented them  
from suspecting that he still entered the place. His visits were  
not many, but he could not bear to let the dust settle on the  
furniture that he and Rose had chosen together; and whenever he  
locked the door and went back to the River Farm, he thought of a  
verse in the Bible: "Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from  
the Garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken."  
  
It was now Friday of the last week in August. The river was full  
of logs, thousands upon thousands of them covering the surface of  
the water from the bridge almost up to the Brier Neighborhood.
  
The Edgewood drive was late, owing to a long drought and low  
water; but it was to begin on the following Monday, and Lije  
Dennett and his under boss were looking over the situation and  
planning the campaign. As they leaned over the bridge-rail they  
saw Mr. Wiley driving down the river road. When he caught sight  
of them he hitched the old white horse at the corner and walked  
toward them, filling his pipe the while in his usual leisurely  
manner.
  
"We're not busy this forenoon," said Lije Dennett. "S'pose we  
stand right here and let Old Kennebec have his say out for once.  
We've never heard the end of one of his stories, an' he's be'n  
talkin' for twenty years."  
  
"All right," rejoined his companion, with a broad grin at the  
idea. "I'm willin', if you are; but who's goin' to tell our  
fam'lies the reason we've deserted 'em! I bate yer we sha'n't  
budge till the crack o' doom. The road commissioner'll come  
along once a year and mend the bridge under our feet, but Old  
Kennebec'll talk straight on till the day o' jedgment."  
  
Mr. Wiley had one of the most enjoyable mornings of his life, and  
felt that after half a century of neglect his powers were at last  
appreciated by his fellow-citizens.
  
He proposed numerous strategic movements to be made upon the  
logs, whereby they would move more swiftly than usual. He  
described several successful drives on the Kennebec, when the  
logs had melted down the river almost by magic, owing to his  
generalship; and he paid a tribute, in passing, to the docility  
of the boss, who on that occasion had never moved a single log  
without asking his advice.
  
From this topic he proceeded genially to narrate the  
life-histories of the boss, the under boss, and several Indians  
belonging to the crew,--histories in which he himself played a  
gallant and conspicuous part. The conversation then drifted  
naturally to the exploits of river-drivers in general, and Mr.
Wiley narrated the sorts of feats in log-riding,  
pickpole-throwing, and the shooting of rapids that he had done in  
his youth. These stories were such as had seldom been heard by  
the ear of man; and, as they passed into circulation  
instantaneously, we are probably enjoying some of them to this  
day.
  
They were still being told when a Crambry child appeared on the  
bridge, bearing a note for the old man.
  
Upon reading it he moved off rapidly in the direction of the  
store, ejaculating:  
  
"Bless my soul! I clean forgot that saleratus, and mother's  
settin' at the kitchen table with the bowl in her lap, waitin'  
for it! Got so int'rested in your list'nin' I never thought o'  
the time."  
  
The connubial discussion that followed this breach of discipline  
began on the arrival of the saleratus, and lasted through supper;  
and Rose went to bed almost immediately afterward for very  
dullness and apathy. Her life stretched out before her in the  
most aimless and monotonous fashion. She saw nothing but  
heartache in the future; and that she richly deserved it made it  
none the easier to bear.
  
Feeling feverish and sleepless, she slipped on her gray Shaker  
cloak and stole quietly downstairs for a breath of air. Her  
grandfather and grandmother were talking on the piazza, and good  
humor seemed to have been restored.
  
"I was over to the tavern to-night," she heard him say, as she  
sat down at a little distance. "I was over to the tavern  
to-night, an' a feller from Gorham got to talkin' an' braggin'  
'bout what a stock o' goods they kep' in the store over there.  
'An','says I, 'I bate ye dollars to doughnuts that there hain't  
a darn thing ye can ask for at Bill Pike's store at Pleasant  
River that he can't go down cellar, or up attic, or out in the  
barn chamber an' git for ye.'  Well, sir, he took me up, an' I  
borrered the money of Joe Dennett, who held the stakes, an' we  
went right over to Bill Pike's with all the boys follerin' on  
behind. An' the Gorham man never let on what he was goin' to ask  
for till the hull crowd of us got inside the store. Then says  
he, as p'lite as a basket o' chips, 'Mr. Pike, I'd like to buy a  
pulpit if you can oblige me with one.'  
  
"Bill scratched his head an' I held my breath. Then says he,  
'Pears to me I'd ought to hev a pulpit or two, if I can jest  
remember where I keep 'em. I don't never cal'late to be out o'  
pulpits, but I'm so plagued for room I can't keep 'em in here with  
the groc'ries. Jim (that's his new store boy), you jest take a  
lantern an' run  out in the far corner o' the shed, at the end   
o' the hickory woodpile, an' see how many  pulpits we've got in  
stock!'  Well, Jim run out, an' when he come back he says, 'We've  
got two, Mr. Pike. Shall I bring  one of 'em in?'  
  
"At that the boys all bust out laughin' an' hollerin' an'  
tauntin' the Gorham man, an' he paid up with a good will, I tell  
ye!"  
  
"I don't approve of bettin'," said Mrs. Wiley grimly, "but I'll  
try to sanctify the money by usin' it for a new wash-boiler."  
  
"The fact is," explained old Kennebec, somewhat confused, "that  
the boys made me spend every cent of it then an' there."  
  
Rose heard her grandmother's caustic reply, and then paid no  
further attention until her keen ear caught the sound of  
Stephen's name. It was a part of her unhappiness that since her  
broken engagement no one would ever allude to him, and she longed  
to hear him mentioned, so that perchance she could get some  
inkling of his movements.
  
"I met Stephen to-night for the first time in a week," said Mr.
Wiley. "He kind o' keeps out o' my way lately. He's goin' to  
drive his span into Portland tomorrow mornin' and bring Rufus  
home from the hospital Sunday afternoon. The doctors think  
they've made a success of their job, but Rufus has got to be  
bandaged up a spell longer. Stephen is goin' to join the drive  
Monday mornin' at the bridge here, so I'll get the latest news o'  
the boy. Land! I'll be turrible glad if he gets out with his  
eyesight, if it's only for Steve's sake. He's a turrible good  
fellow, Steve is! He said something to-night that made me set  
more store by him than ever. I told you I hedn't heard an unkind  
word ag'in' Rose sence she come home from Boston, an' no more I  
hev till this evenin: There was two or three fellers talkin' in  
the post-office, an' they didn't suspicion I was settin' on the  
steps outside the screen door. That Jim Jenkins, that Rose so  
everlastin'ly snubbed at the tavern dance, spoke up, an' says he:  
'This time last year Rose Wiley could 'a' hed the choice of any  
man on the river, an' now I bet ye she can't get nary one.'  
  
"Steve was there, jest goin' out the door, with some bags o'  
coffee an' sugar under his arm.
  
"'I guess you're mistaken about that,' he says, speakin' up jest  
like lightnin'; 'so long as Stephen Waterman's alive, Rose Wiley  
can have him, for one; and that everybody's welcome to know.'  
  
"He spoke right out, loud an' plain, jest as if he was readin'  
the Declaration of Independence. I expected the boys would  
everlastin'ly poke fun at him, but they never said a word. I  
guess his eyes flashed, for he come out the screen door, slammin'  
it after him, and stalked by me as if he was too worked up to  
notice anything or anybody. I didn't foiler him, for his long  
legs git over the ground too fast for me, but thinks I, 'Mebbe  
I'll hev some use for my lemonade-set after all.'"  
  
"I hope to the land you will," responded Mrs. Wiley, "for I'm  
about sick o' movin' it round when I sweep under my bed. And I  
shall be glad if Rose an' Stephen do make it up, for Wealthy Ann  
Brooks's gossip is too much for a Christian woman to stand."  
  
  
  
HOUSEBREAKING  
  
Where was the pale Rose, the faded Rose, that crept noiselessly  
down from her room, wanting neither to speak nor to be spoken to!  
Nobody ever knew. She vanished forever, and in her place a thing  
of sparkles and dimples flashed up the stairway and closed the  
door softly. There was a streak of moonshine lying across the  
bare floor, and a merry ghost, with dressing-gown held prettily  
away from bare feet, danced a gay fandango among the yellow  
moonbeams. There were breathless flights to the open window, and  
kisses thrown in the direction of the River Farm. There were  
impressive declamations at the looking-glass, where a radiant  
creature pointed to her reflection and whispered, "Worthless  
little pig, he loves you, after all!"  
  
Then, when quiet joy had taken the place of mad delight, there  
was a swoop down upon the floor, an impetuous hiding of brimming  
eyes in the white counterpane, and a dozen impassioned promises  
to herself and to something higher than herself, to be a better  
girl.
  
The mood lasted, and deepened, and still Rose did not move. Her  
heart was on its knees before Stephen's faithful love, his  
chivalry, his strength. Her troubled spirit, like a frail boat  
tossed about in the rapids, seemed entering a quiet harbor, where  
there were protecting shores and a still, still evening star.  
Her sails were all torn and drooping, but the harbor was in  
sight, and the poor little weather-beaten craft could rest in  
peace.
  
A period of grave reflection now ensued,--under the bedclothes,  
where one could think better. Suddenly an inspiration seized  
her,--an inspiration so original, so delicious, and above all  
so humble and praiseworthy, that it brought her head from her  
pillow, and she sat bolt upright, clapping her hands like a  
child.
  
"The very thing!" she whispered to herself gleefully. "It will  
take courage, but I'm sure of my ground after what he said before  
them all, and I'll do it. Grandma in Biddeford buying church  
carpets, Stephen in Portland--was ever such a chance?"  
  
The same glowing Rose came downstairs, two steps at a time, next  
morning, bade her grandmother good-by with suspicious pleasure,  
and sent her grandfather away on an errand which, with attendant  
conversation, would consume half the day. Then bundles after  
bundles and baskets after baskets were packed into the wagon,--  
behind the seat, beneath the seat, and finally under the  
lap-robe. She gave a dramatic flourish to the whip, drove across  
the bridge, went through Pleasant River village, and up the leafy  
road to the little house, stared the "To Let" sign scornfully in  
the eye, alighted, and ran like a deer through the aisles of  
waving corn, past the kitchen windows, to the back door.
  
"If he has kept the big key in the old place under the stone,  
where we both used to find it, then he hasn't forgotten me--or  
anything," thought Rose.
  
The key was there, and Rose lifted it with a sob of gratitude.  
It was but five minutes' work to carry all the bundles from the  
wagon to the back steps, and another five to lead old Tom across  
the road into the woods and tie him to a tree quite out of the  
sight of any passer-by.
  
When, after running back, she turned the key in the lock, her  
heart gave a leap almost of terror, and she started at the sound  
of her own footfall. Through the open door the sunlight streamed  
into the dark room. She flew to tables and chairs, and gave a  
rapid sweep of the hand over their surfaces.
  
"He has been dusting here,--and within a few days, too," she  
thought triumphantly.
  
The kitchen was perfection, as she always knew it would be, with  
one door opening to the shaded road and the other looking on the  
river; windows, too, framing the apple-orchard and the elms. She  
had chosen the furniture, but how differently it looked now that  
it was actually in place! The tiny shed had piles of split wood,  
with great boxes of kindlings and shavings, all in readiness for  
the bride, who would do her own cooking. Who but Stephen would  
have made the very wood ready for a woman's home-coming; and why  
had he done so much in May, when they were not to be married  
until August? Then the door of the bedroom was stealthily  
opened, and here Rose sat down and cried for joy and shame and  
hope and fear. The very flowered paper she had refused as too  
expensive! How lovely it looked with the white chamber set! She  
brought in her simple wedding outfit of blankets, bed-linen, and  
counterpanes, and folded them softly in the closet; and then for  
the rest of the morning she went from room to room, doing all  
that could remain undiscovered, even to laying a fire in the new  
kitchen stove.
  
This was the plan. Stephen must pass the house on his way from  
the River Farm to the bridge, where he was to join the  
riverdrivers on Monday morning. She would be out of bed by the  
earliest peep of dawn, put on Stephen's favorite pink calico,  
leave a note for her grandmother, run like a hare down her side  
of the river and up Stephen's, steal into the house, open blinds  
and windows, light the fire, and set the kettle boiling. Then  
with a sharp knife she would cut down two rows of corn, and thus  
make a green pathway from the front kitchen steps to the road.  
Next, the false and insulting "To Let" sign would be forcibly  
tweaked from the tree and thrown into the grass. She would then  
lay the table in the kitchen, and make ready the nicest breakfast  
that two people ever sat down to. And oh, would two people sit  
down to it; or would one go off in a rage and the other die of  
grief and disappointment?
  
Then, having done all, she would wait and palpitate, and  
palpitate and wait, until Stephen came. Surely no property-owner  
in the universe could drive along a road, observe his corn  
leveled to the earth, his sign removed, his house open, and smoke  
issuing from his chimney, without going in to surprise the rogue  
and villain who could be guilty of such vandalism.
  
And when he came in?
  
Oh, she had all day Sunday in which to forecast, with mingled  
dread and gladness and suspense, that all-important, all-decisive  
first moment! All day Sunday to frame and unframe penitent  
speeches. All day Sunday! Would it ever be Monday? If so, what  
would Tuesday bring? Would the sun rise on happy Mrs. Stephen  
Waterman of Pleasant River, or on miserable Miss Rose Wiley of  
the Prier Neighborhood?
  
  
  
THE DREAM ROOM  
  
Long ago, when Stephen was a boy of fourteen or fifteen, he had  
gone with his father to a distant town to spend the night. After  
an early breakfast next morning his father had driven off for a  
business interview, and left the boy to walk about during his  
absence. He wandered aimlessly along a quiet side street, and  
threw himself down on the grass outside a pretty garden to amuse  
himself as best he could.
  
After a few minutes he heard voices, and, turning, peeped through  
the bars of the gate in idle, boyish curiosity. It was a small  
brown house; the kitchen door was open, and a table spread with a  
white cloth was set in the middle of the room. There was a  
cradle in a far corner, and a man was seated at the table as  
though he might be waiting for his breakfast.
  
There is a kind of sentiment about the kitchen in New England, a  
kind of sentiment not provoked by other rooms. Here the farmer  
drops in to spend a few minutes when he comes back from the barn  
or field on an errand. Here, in the great, clean, sweet,  
comfortable place, the busy housewife lives, sometimes rocking  
the cradle, sometimes opening and shutting the oven door,  
sometimes stirring the pot, darning stockings, paring vegetables,  
or mixing goodies in a yellow bowl. The children sit on the  
steps, stringing beans, shelling peas, or hulling berries; the  
cat sleeps on the floor near the wood-box; and the visitor feels  
exiled if he stays in sitting-room or parlor, for here, where the  
mother is always busy, is the heart of the farm-house.
  
There was an open back door to this kitchen, a door framed in  
morning-glories, and the woman (or was she only girl?) standing  
at the stove was pretty,--oh, so pretty in Stephen's eyes! His  
boyish heart went out to her on the instant. She poured a cup of  
coffee and walked with it to the table; then an unexpected,  
interesting thing happened--something the boy ought not 'to  
have seen, and never forgot. The man, putting out his hand to  
take the cup, looked up at the pretty woman with a smile, and she  
stooped and kissed him.
  
Stephen was fifteen. As he looked, on the instant he became a  
man, with a man's hopes, desires, ambitions. He looked eagerly,  
hungrily, and the scene burned itself on the sensitive plate of  
his young heart, so that, as he grew older, he could take the  
picture out in the dark, from time to time, and look at it again.  
When he first met Rose, he did not know precisely what she was to  
mean to him; but before long, when he closed his eyes and the old  
familiar picture swam into his field of vision, behold, by some  
spiritual chemistry, the pretty  woman's face had given place to  
that of Rose!
  
All such teasing visions had been sternly banished during this  
sorrowful summer, and it was a thoughtful, sober Stephen who  
drove along the road on this mellow August morning. The dust was  
deep; the goldenrod waved its imperial plumes, making the humble  
waysides gorgeous; the river chattered and sparkled till it met  
the logs at the Brier Neighorhood, and then, lapsing into  
silence, flowed steadily under them till it found a vent for its  
spirits in the dashing and splashing of the falls.
  
Haying was over; logging was to begin that day; then harvesting;  
then wood-cutting; then eternal successions of plowing, sowing,  
reaping, haying, logging, harvesting, and so on, to the endless  
end of his days. Here and there a red or a yellow branch,  
painted only yesterday, caught his eye and made him shiver. He  
was not ready for winter; his heart still craved the summer it  
had missed.
  
Hello! What was that? Corn-stalks prone on the earth? Sign  
torn down and lying flat in the grass? Blinds open, fire in the  
chimney?
  
He leaped from the wagon, and, hinging the reins to Alcestis  
Crambry, said, "Stay right here out of sight, and don't you move  
till I call you!" and striding up the green pathway, hung open  
the kitchen door.
  
A forest of corn waving in the doorway at the back,  
morning-glories clambering round and round the window-frames,  
table with shining white cloth, kettle humming and steaming,  
something bubbling in a pan on the stove, fire throwing out sweet  
little gleams of welcome through the open damper. All this was  
taken in with one incredulous, rapturous twinkle of an eye; but  
something else, too: Rose of all roses, Rose of the river, Rose  
of the world, standing behind a chair, her hand pressed against  
her heart, her lips parted, her breath coming and going! She was  
glowing like a jewel, glowing with the extraordinary brilliancy  
that emotion gives to some women. She used to be happy in a gay,  
sparkling way, like the shallow part of the stream as it chotters  
over white pebbles and bright sands. Now it was a broad, steady,  
full happiness like the deeps of the river under the sun.
  
"Don't speak, Stephen, till you hear what I have to say. It  
takes a good deal of courage for a girl to do as I am doing; but  
I want to show how sorry I am, and it's the only way."  She was  
trembling, and the words came faster and faster. "I've been  
very wrong and foolish, and made you very unhappy, but I haven't  
done what you would have hated most. I haven't been engaged to  
Claude Merrill; he hasn't so much as asked me. I am here to beg  
you to forgive me, to eat breakfast with me, to drive me to the  
minister's and marry me quickly, quickly, before anything happens  
to prevent us, and then to bring me home here to live all the  
days of my life. Oh, Stephen dear, honestly, honestly, you haven't  
lost anything in all this long, miserable summer. I've  
suffered, too, and I'm better worth loving than I was. Will you  
take me back?"  
  
Rose had a tremendous power of provoking and holding love, and  
Stephen of loving. His was too generous a nature for revilings  
and complaints and reproaches.
  
The shores of his heart were strewn with the wreckage of the  
troubled summer, but if the tide of love is high enough, it  
washes such things out of remembrance. He just opened his arms  
and took Rose to his heart, faults and all, with joy--and  
gratitude; and she was as happy as a child who has escaped the  
scolding it richly deserved, and who determines, for very  
thankfulness' sake, never to be naughty again.  
  
"You don't know what you've done for me, Stephen," she whispered,  
with her face hidden on his shoulder. "I was just a common  
little prickly rosebush when you came along like a good gardener  
and 'grafted in' something better; the something better was your  
love, Stephen dear, and it's made everything different. The  
silly Rose you were engaged to long ago has disappeared  
somewhere; I hope you won't be able to find her under the new  
leaves."  
  
"She was all I wanted," said Stephen.
  
"You thought she was," the girl answered, "because you didn't  
see the prickles, but you'd have felt them sometime. The old  
Rose was a selfish thing, not good enough for you; the new Rose  
is going to be your wife, and Rufus's sister, and your mother's  
daughter, all in one."  
  
Then such a breakfast was spread as Stephen, in his sorry years  
of bachelor existence, had forgotten could exist; but before he  
broke his fast he ran out to the wagon and served the astonished  
Alcestis with his wedding refreshments then and there, bidding  
him drive back to the River Farm and bring him a package that lay  
in the drawer of his shaving-stand, package placed there when hot  
youth and love and longing had inspired him to hurry on the  
marriage day.
  
"There's an envelope, Alcestis," he cried, "a long envelope way,  
way back in the corner, and a small box on top of it. Bring them  
both, and my wallet too, and if you find them all and get them to  
me safely you shall be bridesmaid and groomsman and best man and  
usher and maid of honor at a wedding, in less than an hour! Off  
with you! Drive straight and use the whip on Dolly!"  
  
When he reentered the kitchen, flushed with joy and excitement,  
Rose put the various good things on the table and he almost  
tremblingly took his seat, fearing that contact with the solid  
wood might wake him from this entrancing vision.
  
"I'd like to put you in your chair like a queen and wait on you,"  
he said with a soft boyish stammer; "but I am too dazed with  
happiness to be of any use."  
  
"It's my turn to wait upon you, and I--Oh! how I love to have  
you dazed," Rose answered. "I'll be at the table presently  
myself; but we have been housekeeping only three minutes, and we  
have nothing but the tin coffee-pot this morning, so I'll pour  
the coffee from the stove."  
  
She filled a cup with housewifely care and brought it to  
Stephen's side. As she set it down and was turning, she caught  
his look,--a look so full of longing that no loving woman,  
however busy, could have resisted it; then she stooped and kissed  
him fondly, fervently.
  
Stephen put his arm about her, and, drawing her down to his knee,  
rested his head against her soft shoulder with a sigh of comfort,  
like that of a tired child. He had waited for it ten years; and  
at last the dream-room had come true.