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 entir