settler, who had been silently regarding the different portents to
which we have alluded. "I don't know about the ice staying here twenty
hours, or even one. This has been no common thaw, that we have had for
the last six or eight hours, let me tell you."

"And still," observed Woodburn, "I should not think the water high
enough as yet to cause a breaking up, should you?"

"With a slow rise, and in a still time, perhaps not, Harry. But when
the water is rising rapidly, as now, and especially if there is a
strong wind, like this, to increase the motion, as it does either by
outward pressure, or by forcing the air through the chinks in under
the ice, I have always noticed that the stream acts on the ice at a
much less height, and much more powerfully, than when the rise is slow
and the weather calm."

"Then you look upon the appearances I named as indications that such
an event is soon to take place here, do you?"

"I do, Harry, much sooner than you are expecting; for the signs you
name are not the only ones which tell that story, as I will soon
convince you all, if you will be still and listen a moment."

This remark caused the company to pause and place themselves in a
listening attitude.

"There," resumed the speaker, pointing up to the bold, shaggy steeps
of the mountain, which we have before alluded to, and which, from the
opposite side of the Connecticut, and within a few furlongs from the
spot where they now stood, rose, half concealed in its "misty shroud,"