We were silent. After a moment I turned to Mrs. Falchion, and said: "It
is beautiful, is it not?"

She drew in a long breath, her eyes lighted up, and she said, with a
strange abandon of gaiety: "Yes, it is delightful to live."

It seemed so, in spite of the forebodings of my friend and my own
uneasiness concerning him, Ruth Devlin, and Mrs. Falchion. The place was
all peace: a very monotony of toil and pleasure. The heat drained
through the valley back and forth in visible palpitations upon the roofs
of the houses, the mills, and the vast piles of lumber: all these seemed
breathing. It looked a busy Arcady. From beneath us life vibrated with
the regularity of a pulse: distance gave a kind of delighted ease to
toil. Event appeared asleep.

But when I look back now, after some years, at the experiences of that
day, I am astonished by the running fire of events, which, unfortunately,
were not all joy.

As I write I can hear that keen wild singing of the saw come to us
distantly, with a pleasant, weird elation. The big mill hung above the
river, its sides all open, humming with labour, as I had seen it many a
time during my visit to Roscoe. The sun beat in upon it, making a broad
piazza of light about its sides. Beyond it were pleasant shadows,
through which men passed and repassed at their work. Life was busy all
about it. Yet the picture was bold, open, and strong. Great iron hands
reached down into the water, clamped a massive log or huge timber,
lightly drew it up the slide from the water, where, guided by the hand-
spikes of the men, it was laid upon its cradle and carried slowly to the
devouring teeth of the saws: there to be sliced through rib and bone in