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 wonhi haxe forever set apart this winter from ail 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