ark sloping slab-roof--the great black wheel
continually at war with the water, which, dashing bravely against it,
finds itself carried off its feet into the buckets, and whirled half
around, and then coolly dismissed into the stream below--the long
flume through which the water rushes to the unequal fray, and--what
next!

Then the pond, too, is not to be overlooked. There are generally some
twenty or thirty logs floating in one corner, close to each other, and
breaking out into great commotion every time the gate is hoisted--the
otter is now and then seen gliding in the farther nooks--and a quick
eye may catch, particularly about the dam, where he generally burrows,
a glimpse of the musk-rat as he dives down. Now and then too the wild
duck will push his beautiful shape with his bright feet through
it--the snipe will alight and "teter," as the children say, along the
banks--the woodcock will show his brownish red bosom amongst the reeds
as he comes to stick his long bill into the black ooze for sucking, as
dock-boys stick straws into molasses hogsheads--and once in a great
while, the sawyer, if he's wide awake, will see, in the Spring or
Fall, the wild goose leaving his migrating wedge overhead, and diving
and fluttering about in it, as a momentary bathing place, and to rest
for a time his throat, hoarse with uttering his laughably wise and
solemn "honk, honk." Nor must the ragged and smirched-faced boys be
forgotten, eternally on the logs, or the banks, or in the leaky scow,
with their twine and pin-hooks catching "spawney-cooks," and
"bull-heads" as worthless as themselves, and as if that were their
only business in life. And then the streak of saw-dust running along
in the midst of the brook below, and forming yellow nooks to imprison
bubbles and sticks and leaves and what not, every now and then making
a jet outward and joining the main body--and lastly the saw-mill yard,
with its boards, white, dark and golden, piled up in great masses,
with narrow lanes running through--and gray glistening logs, with
their bark coats off, waiting their turn to be "boarded."

The cloud had now risen higher, with its ragged pointed edges, and
murky bosom--sharper lightning flashed athwart it, sometimes in
trickling streaks, and sometimes in broad glances, whilst low growls
of thunder were every now and then heard. The sun was already
swallowed up--and a strange, unnatural, ghastly glare was upon every
object. The atmosphere was mo