conflicts. A ragged ledge of rock, standing well above the
yeasty torrent, marked the middle of the river. Stephen had been
stranded there once, just at dusk, on a stormy afternoon in
spring. A jam had broken under the men, and Stephen, having
taken too great risks, had been caught on the moving mass, and,
leaping from log to log, his only chance for life had been to
find a footing on Gray Rock, which was nearer than the shore.

Rufus was ill at the time, and Mrs. Waterman so anxious and
nervous that processions of boys had to be sent up to the River
Farm, giving the frightened mother the latest bulletins of her
son's welfare. Luckily, the river was narrow just at the Gray
Rock, and it was a quite possible task, though no easy one, to
lash two ladders together and make a narrow bridge on which the
drenched and shivering man could reach the shore. There were
loud cheers when Stephen ran lightly across the slender pathway
that led to safety--ran so fast that the ladders had scarce time
to bend beneath his weight. He had certainly "taken chances," but
when did he not do that? The logger's life is one of "moving
accidents by flood and field," and Stephen welcomed with wild
exhilaration every hazard that came in his path. To him there
was never a dull hour from the moment that the first notch was
cut in the tree (for he sometimes joined the boys in the lumber
camp just for a frolic) till the later one when the hewn log
reached its final destination. He knew nothing of "tooling" a
four-in-hand through narrow lanes 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.