CHAPTER XII.
THE GREAT MILL PICNIC.
The rates of ferriage were fixed at twenty-five cents for a team, fifteen cents for a man on horseback, ten cents for a single animal, and five cents for a foot-passenger.

Two cards, with these rates neatly printed on them by Ruth in large letters, were tacked up on the anchorage posts, so that passengers might not have any chance to dispute with the ferryman, or "superintendent of ferries," as he liked to be called.
Leaving him in charge of the boat--for he was not yet strong enough for more active work--and leaving Mr.March at work upon the house, Mr.
Elmer, Mark, Jan, and four colored men, taking the mules with them, set out bright and early on Tuesday morning for the mill, to begin work on the dam.
They found the pond empty, and exposing a large surface of black mud studded with the stumps of old trees, and the stream from the sulphur spring rippling along merrily in a channel it had cut for itself through the broken portion of the dam.

While two men were set to digging a new channel for this stream, so as to lead it through the sluice-way, and leave the place where the work was to be done free from water, the others began to cut down half a dozen tall pines, and hew them into squared timbers.
A deep trench was dug along the whole length of the broken part of the dam for a foundation, and into this was lowered one of the great squared timbers, forty feet long, that had six mortice-holes cut in its upper side.

Into these holes were set six uprights, each ten feet long, and on top of these was placed as a stringer, another forty-foot timber.

To this framework was spiked, on the inside, a close sheathing of plank.