ation for the greatest event of the season. On
a certain gray Saturday in March, after a week of mild temperature, it
began to rain as if, after months of snowing, it really enjoyed a new
form of entertainment. Sunday dawned with the very flood-gates of heaven
opening, so it seemed. All day long the river was rising under its miles
of unbroken ice, rising at the threatening rate of four inches an hour.

Edgewood went to bed as usual that night, for the bridge at that point
was set too high to be carried away by freshets, but at other villages
whose bridges were in less secure position there was little sleep and
much anxiety.

At midnight a cry was heard from the men watching at Milliken's Mills.
The great ice jam had parted from Rolfe's Island and was swinging out
into the open, pushing everything before it. All the able-bodied men in
the village turned out of bed, and with lanterns in hand began to clear
the stores and mills, for it seemed that everything near the river-banks
must go before that avalanche of ice.

Stephen and Rufus were there helping to save the property of their
friends and neighbors; Rose and Mite Shapley had stayed the night with
a friend, and all three girls were shivering with fear and excitement as
they stood near the bridge, watching the never-to-be-forgotten sight.
It is needless to say that the Crambry family was on hand, for whatever
instincts they may have lacked, the instinct for being on the spot
when anything was happening, was present in them to the most remarkable
extent. The town was supporting them in modest winter quarters somewhat
nearer than Killick to the center of civilization, and the first alarm
brought them promptly to the scene, Mrs. Crambry remarking at intervals:
"If I'd known there'd be so many out I'd ought to have worn my bunnit;
but I ain't got no bunnit, an' if I had they say I ain't got no head to
wear it on!"

By the time the jam neared the falls it had grown with its
accumulations, until it was made up of tier after tier of huge ice
cakes, piled side by side and one upon another, with heaps of trees and
branches and drifting lumber holding them in place. 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