tected the timber framework
from the beating of the elements. Dry, save for the occasional splash of
the hissing water far below, the great bones of this bridge hardened and
lasted like sills of granite. The shingle roof curled, cracked, and
dropped off into the water; the floor broke through, the sides rotted,
and were all replaced again and again. But the powerful grandsires who
had come down from the Hills to lay a floor over the Valley were not
intending to do that work again, and went about their labour like the
giants of old times.

Indeed, a legend runs that these sills were not laid by men at all, but
by the Dwarfs. As evidence of this folklore tale, it is pointed out that
these logs have the mark of a rough turtle burned on their under surface
like the turtle cut on the great stones in the mountains. And men differ
about what wood they are of, some declaring them to be oak and others
sugar, and still others a strange wood of which the stumps only are now
found in the Hills. It is true that no mark of axe can be found on them,
but this is no great wonder since the bark was evidently removed by
burning, an ancient method of preserving the wood from rot.

We swung down Thornberg's Hill in a long trot, and on to the bridge. The
river was swollen, a whirling mass of yellow water that surged and
pounded and howled under the timber floor as though the mad spirits of
the river still resented the work of the Dwarfs. It was the Valley's
business to divide the land, and it had done it well, leaving the sons
of Eve to bite their fingers until, on a night, the crooked people came
stumbling down to take a hand in the matter.

We clattered through, and down a long abutment. It almost made one dizzy
to look over. A rail or a tree limb would ride down into this devil's
maw, or a log would come swimming, its back bobbing in the muddy water,
and then strike the smooth nose of a boulder and go to splinters.

Beyond the mad river the mild morning world was a land of lazy quiet.
The sky was as blue as a woman's eye, and the sun rose clear in his
flaming cart. Along the roadside the little purple flowers of autumn
peeped about under the green briers. The fields were shaggy with ragweed
and dead whitetop and yellow sedge. The walnut and the apple trees were
bare, and the tall sycamore stood naked in its white skin. Sometimes a
heron flapped across the land, taking a short cut to a lower water, or a
woodpecker dived from the tall ti