"Then, when he graduated from errants," went on the crafty old man, who
knew that when breakfast ceased, churning must begin, "Steve used to
get seventy-five cents a day helpin' clear up the river--if you can call
this here silv'ry streamlet a river. He'd pick off a log here an' there
an' send it afloat, an' dig out them that hed got ketched in the rocks,
and tidy up the banks jest like spring house-cleanin'. If he'd hed any
kind of a boss, an' hed be'n trained on the Kennebec, he'd 'a' made a
turrible smart driver, Steve would."

"He'll be drownded, that's what'll become o' him," prophesied Mrs. Wiley;
"specially if Rose encourages him in such silly foolishness as ridin'
logs from his house down to ourn, dark nights."

"Seein' as how Steve built ye a nice pigpen last month, 'pears to me
you might have a good word for him now an' then, mother," remarked Old
Kennebec, reaching for his second piece of pie.

"I wa'n't a mite deceived by that pigpen, no more'n I was by Jed Towle's
hencoop, nor Ivory Dunn's well-curb, nor Pitt Packard's shed-steps. If
you hed ever kep' up your buildin's yourself, Rose's beaux would n't hev
to do their courtin' with carpenters' tools."

"It's the pigpen an' the hencoop you want to keep your eye on, mother,
not the motives of them as made 'em. It's turrible onsettlin' to inspeck
folks' motives too turrible close."

"Riding a log is no more to Steve than riding a horse, so he says,"
interposed Rose, to change the subject; "but I tell him that a horse
does n't revolve under you, and go sideways at the same time that it is
going forwards."

"Log-ridin' ain't no trick at all to a man of sperit," said Mr. Wiley.
"There's a few places in the Kennebec where the water's too shaller to
let the logs float, so we used to build a flume, an' the logs would whiz
down like arrers shot from a bow. The boys used to collect by the side
o' that there flume to see me ride a log down, an' I've watched 'em drop
in a dead faint when I spun by the crowd; but land! you can't drownd
some folks, not without you tie nail-kags to their head an' feet an'
drop 'em in the falls; I've rid logs down the b'ilin'est rapids o' the
Kennebec an' never lost my head. I remember well the year o' the gre't
freshet, I rid a log from--"

"There, there, father, that'll do," said Mrs. Wiley, decisively. "I'll
put the cream in the churn, an' you jest work off' some o' your steam by
bringin' the butter for us afore you start for th