The Riverman
by Stewart Edward White
I
The time was the year 1872, and the place a bend in the river above
a long pond terminating in a dam. Beyond this dam, and on a flat
lower than it, stood a two-story mill structure. Save for a small,
stump-dotted clearing, and the road that led from it, all else was
forest. Here in the bottom-lands, following the course of the
stream, the hardwoods grew dense, their uppermost branches just
beginning to spray out in the first green of spring. Farther back,
where the higher lands arose from the swamp, could be discerned the
graceful frond of white pines and hemlock, and the sturdy tops of
Norways and spruce.
A strong wind blew up the length of the pond. It ruffled the
surface of the water, swooping down in fan-shaped, scurrying cat's-
paws, turning the dark-blue surface as one turns the nap of velvet.
At the upper end of the pond it even succeeded in raising quite
respectable wavelets, which LAP LAP LAPPED eagerly against a barrier
of floating logs that filled completely the mouth of the inlet
river. And behind this barrier were other logs, and yet others, as
far as the eye could see, so that the entire surface of the stream
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