ash, threaded some loose yarn into Melissa’s colors, as he told himself, sneaked into the barn, where Beelzebub was tied, got on the sheep’s back and, as the old ram sprang forward, couched his lance at the trough and shattered it with a thrill that left him trembling for half an hour.  It was too good to give up that secret joust and he made another lance and essayed another tournament, but this time Beelzebub butted the door open and sprang with a loud ba-a-a into the yard and charged for the gate—­in full view of old Joel, the three brothers, and the school-master, who were standing in the road.  Instinctively, Chad swung on in spite of the roar of laughter and astonishment that greeted him and, as Tom banged the gate, the ram swerved and Chad shot off sidewise as from a catapult and dropped, a most unheroic little knight, in the mire.  That ended Chad’s chivalry in the hills, for in the roars of laughter that greeted him, Chad recognized Caleb Hazel’s as the loudest.  If he laughed, chivalry could never thrive there, and Chad gave it up; but the seeds were sown.

The winter passed, and what a time Chad and Jack had, snaking logs out of the mountains with two, four, six—­yes, even eight yoke of oxen, when the log was the heart of a monarch oak or poplar—­snaking them to the chute; watching them roll and whirl and leap like jack-straws from end to end down the steep incline and, with one last shoot in the air, roll, shaking, quivering, into a mighty heap on the bank of Kingdom Come.  And then the “rafting” of those logs—­dragging them into the pool of the creek, lashing them together with saplings driven to the logs with wooden pins in auger-holes—­wading about, meanwhile, waist deep in the cold water:  and the final lashing of the raft to a near-by tree with a grape-vine cable—­to await the coming of a “tide.”

Would that tide never come?  It seemed not.  The spring ploughing was over, the corn planted; there had been rain after rain, but gentle rains only.  There had been prayers for rain: 

“O Lord,” said the circuit-rider, “we do not presume to dictate to Thee, but we need rain, an’ need it mighty bad.  We do not presume to dictate, but, if it pleases Thee, send us, not a gentle sizzle-sizzle, but a sod-soaker, O Lord, a gullywasher.  Give us a tide, O Lord!” Sunrise and sunset, old Joel turned his eye to the east and the west and shook his head.  Tall Tom did the same, and Dolph and Rube studied the heavens for a sign.  The school-master grew visibly impatient and Chad was in a fever of restless expectancy.  The old mother had made him a suit of clothes —­ mountain-clothes —­ for the trip.  Old Joel gave him a five-dollar bill for his winter’s work.  Even Jack seemed to know that something unusual was on hand and hung closer about the house, for fear he might be left behind.

Softly at last, one night, came the patter of little feet on the roof and passed—­came again and paused; and then there was a rush and a steady roar that wakened Chad and thrilled him as he lay listening.  It did not last long, but the river was muddy enough and high enough for the Turner brothers to float the raft slowly out from the mouth of Kingdom Come and down in front of the house, where it was anchored to a huge sycamore in plain sight.  At noon the clouds gathered and old Joel gave up his trip to town.