The Village Watch-Tower | Page 5

paused to look at Mount Washington, miles away in the distance.

Tory Hill and Saco Hill met at the bridge, and just there, too, the river
road began its shady course along the east side of the stream: in view of
all which "old Mis' Bascom's settin'-room winder" might well be called
the "Village Watch-Tower," when you consider further that she had
moved only from her high-backed rocker to her bed, and from her bed
to her rocker, for more than thirty years,-- ever since that july day when
her husband had had a sun-stroke while painting the meeting-house
steeple, and her baby Jonathan had been thereby hastened into a world
not in the least ready to receive him.
She could not have lived without that window, she would have told you,
nor without the river, which had lulled her to sleep ever since she could
remember. It was in the south chamber upstairs that she had been born.
Her mother had lain there and listened to the swirl of the water, in that
year when the river was higher than the oldest inhabitant had ever seen
it,-- the year when the covered bridge at the Mills had been carried
away, and when the one at the Falls was in hourly danger of
succumbing to the force of the freshet.
All the men in both villages were working on the river, strengthening
the dam, bracing the bridge, and breaking the jams of logs; and with the
parting of the boom, the snapping of the bridge timbers, the crashing of
the logs against the rocks, and the shouts of the river-drivers, the little
Lucinda had come into the world. Some one had gone for the father,
and had found him on the river, where he had been since day-break,
drenched with the storm, blown fro his dangerous footing time after
time, but still battling with the great heaped-up masses of logs,
wrenching them from one another's grasp, and sending them down the
swollen stream.
Finally the jam broke; and a cheer of triumph burst from the excited
men, as the logs, freed from their bondage, swept down the raging
flood, on and ever on in joyous liberty, faster and faster, till they
encountered some new obstacle, when they heaped themselves together
again, like puppets of Fate, and were beaten by the waves into another
helpless surrender.
With the breaking of the jam, one dead monarch of the forest leaped

into the air as if it had been shot from a cannon's mouth, and lodged
between two jutting peaks of rock high on the river bank. Presently
another log was dashed against it, but rolled off and hurried down the
stream; then another, and still another; but no force seemed enough to
drive the giant from its intrenched position.
"Hurry on down to the next jam, Raish, and let it alone," cried the men.
"Mebbe it'll git washed off in the night, and anyhow you can't budge it
with no kind of a tool we've got here."
Then from the shore came a boy's voice calling, "There's a baby up to
your house!" And the men repeated in stentorian tones, "Baby up to
your house, Raish! Leggo the log; you're wanted!"
"Boy or girl?" shouted the young father.
"Girl!" came back the answer above the roar of the river.
Whereupon Raish Dunnell steadied himself with his pick and taking a
hatchet from his belt, cut a rude letter "L" on the side of the stranded
log.
"L's for Lucindy," he laughed. "Now you log if you git's fur as Saco,
drop in to my wife's folks and tell 'em the baby's name."
There had not been such a freshet for years before, and there had never
been one since; so, as the quiet seasons went by, "Lucindy's log" was
left in peace, the columbines blooming all about it, the harebells
hanging their heads of delicate blue among the rocks that held it in
place, the birds building their nests in the knot-holes of its withered
side.
Seventy years had passed, and on each birthday, from the time when
she was only "Raish Dunnell's little Lou," to the years when she was
Lucinda Bascom, wife and mother, she had wandered down by the river
side, and gazed, a little superstitiously perhaps, on the log that had been
marked with an "L" on the morning she was born. It had stood the wear
and tear of the elements bravely, but now it was beginning, like

Lucinda, to show its age. Its back was bent, like hers; its face was
seamed and wrinkled, like her own; and the village lovers who looked
at it from the opposite bank wondered if, after all, it would hold out as
long as "old Mis' Bascom."
She held out bravely, old Mrs.