laugh. "You are sometimes too droll,
Mr. Fisher," she said.

YOUNG MOLL'S PEEVY.

BY C. A. STEPHENS.

_Scribner's Monthly, April, 1875._

Villate's "drive" of logs had jammed at the foot of Red Rapids in the
very throat of the main "pitch," where the Aux Lievres falls over the
ledges into the "glut-hole" fifty feet below. Named "glut-hole" by the
river-men; for lumber falling in here will sometimes circle a month,
unless poled out. The waters whirl and are drawn down with a peculiar
sinuous motion. Bodies going over are long engulfed, and sometimes
never reappear, for the basin is of great depth and there are caverns
under water beneath the shelving ledges, such as the drivers call
_cachots d'enfer_, and have invested with a superstitious character,
as the abode of evil spirits of the flood--a thing not greatly to be
wondered at; for a wilder locality could hardly be cited, its rugged
cliffs of red sandstone, hung with enormous lichens, like sides of
leather, and overhung from high above with shaggy black spruces.

There were seven and a-half million feet of lumber in Villate's drive
that spring. Every stick of it went into the great jam above the
glut-hole. The rough fortunes of youth made me an eye-witness of the
scene. A wilder spectacle I never saw throughout the lumbering region
during a space of eight years. The gates of the dams at the foot of
all the lakes were up; the volume of water was immense. Rocks, which
in summer stand twenty feet out of the rapids, were now under water.
The torrent came pouring down the long incline, black and swift as an
arrow, and went over into the pool at one thunderous plunge, throwing
up a vast column of mist. Two ledges only, situated in the very throat
of the "pitch," showed above water. These rocks the lumbering company
had designed to blast out the previous autumn, but had been prevented
by heavy rains. They then stood twenty-seven feet out of water. Now
their crests are barely exposed, and the flood washes over them in its
mighty rhythm-motion. In the rapids the whole stream is compressed to
a width of a little more than seventy yards.

A light jam had formed that morning at a place the drivers called a
_tournant d'eau_, about a mile above. This was broken by getting a
haul on it from the shore with a dog-warp. Thereby several thousand
logs were liberated at once, and went down together into the rapids.
The older drivers exclaimed that it would make mischief whe