Some of the blocks stood erect and towered like icebergs, and
these, glittering in the lights of the twinkling lanterns, 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 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