The Story of My Childhood
55
"Flowed Swamp," three miles, we knew every rod of it. Old "Rocky Hills," so high, so steep, so thickly wooded that a horse would never attempt them, were no strangers. We knew where the best chestnuts were. We explored the "Devil's Den," in spite of the tradition that it was an abode for the tempters of Eve. The "French River," that later carried all the factories of North Oxford, spread itself out in lazy rest, after its rugged leaps, as it meandered through the broad, beautiful meadows and interval land, the pride of the farm.
A long hewn log or pole stretched across it in its narrowest, deepest place. I would not dare to say how long, but it could not have been more than fourteen inches wide, and swayed and teetered from the
