THREE COMMANDMENTS IN THE VULGAR TONGUE




THE BRIDGE HOUSE

It stood on a wide wall between two small bridges. These were approaches
to the big covered bridge spanning the main channel of the Madawaska
River, and when swelled by the spring thaws and rains, the two flanking
channels divided at the foundations of the house, and rustled away
through the narrow paths of the small bridges to the rapids. You could
stand at any window in the House and watch the ugly, rushing current,
gorged with logs, come battering at the wall, jostle between the piers,
and race on to the rocks and the dam and the slide beyond. You stepped
from the front door upon the wall, which was a road between the bridges,
and from the back door into the river itself.

The House had once been a tavern. It looked a wayfarer, like its patrons
the river-drivers, with whom it was most popular. You felt that it had no
part in the career of the village on either side, but was like a rock in
a channel, at which a swimmer caught or a vagrant fish loitered.

Pierre knew the place, when, of a night in the springtime or early
summer, throngs of river-drivers and their bosses sauntered at its doors,
or hung over the railing of the wall, as they talked and smoked.

The glory of the Bridge House suddenly declined. That was because Finley,
the owner, a rich man, came to hate the place--his brother's blood
stained the barroom floor. He would have destroyed the house but that