Oh, hap-py is th’ mil-ler who lives by him-self!  As th’ wheel gos round, he gath-ers in ’is wealth, One hand on the hop-per and the oth-er on the bag; As the wheel goes round, he cries out, “Grab!” Oh, ain’t you a lit-tle bit a-shamed o’ this, Oh, ain’t you a lit-tle bit a-sham’d o’ this, Oh, ain’t you a lit-tle bit a-sham’d o’ this—­To stay all night for one sweet kiss?  Oh, etc.

[Transcriber’s note:  A Lilypond (www.lilypond.org) rendition of this song is at the end of this e-book.]

My mother gave me all the schooling I had that winter.  A year later they built a schoolhouse, not quite a mile away, where I found more fun than learning.  After two years I shouldered my axe and went to the river-land with the choppers every winter morning.

My father was stronger than any of them except D’ri, who could drive his axe to the bit every blow, day after day.  He had the strength of a giant, and no man I knew tried ever to cope with him.  By the middle of May we began rolling in for the raft.  As soon as they were floating, the logs were withed together and moored in sections.  The bay became presently a quaking, redolent plain of timber.

When we started the raft, early in June, that summer of 1810, and worked it into the broad river with sweeps and poles, I was aboard with D’ri and six other men, bound for the big city of which I had heard so much.  I was to visit the relatives of my mother and spend a year in the College de St. Pierre.  We had a little frame house on a big platform, back of the middle section of the raft, with bunks in it, where we ate and slept and told stories.  Lying on the platform, there was a large flat stone that held our fires for both cooking and comfort.  D’ri called me in the dusk of the early morning, the first night out, and said we were near the Sault.  I got up, rubbed my eyes, and felt a mighty thrill as I heard the roar of the great rapids and the creaking withes, and felt the lift of the speeding water.  D’ri said they had broken the raft into three parts, ours being hindmost.  The roaring grew louder, until my shout was as a whisper in a hurricane.  The logs began to heave and fall, and waves came rushing through them.  Sheets of spray shot skyward, coming down like a shower.  We were shaken as by an earthquake in the rough water.  Then the roar fell back of us, and the raft grew steady.

“Gin us a tough twist,” said D’ri, shouting down at me—­“kind uv a twist o’ the bit ‘n’ a kick ’n the side.”

It was coming daylight as we sailed into still water, and then D’ri put his hands to his mouth and hailed loudly, getting an answer out of the gloom ahead.

“Gol-dum ef it hain’t the power uv a thousan’ painters!” D’ri continued, laughing as he spoke.  “Never see nothin’ jump ‘n’ kick ‘n’ spit like thet air, ’less it hed fur on—­never ’n all my born days.”

D’ri’s sober face showed dimly now in the dawn.  His hands were on his hips; his faded felt hat was tipped sideways.  His boots and trousers were quarrelling over that disputed territory between his knees and ankles.  His boots had checked the invasion.