s 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 bravos, 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 some time, when he had a
free moment,--some time 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 unerceptible 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