It wasn't dark when Baartock was carried back across the stream. They were finished for the day.
The next day, Mrs. Jackson couldn't come to get them. When they got down to the house, Mr. Fennis was waiting for them. He didn't say a word, but he stared at Baartock's father. He looked as if his eyes were going to pop out.
There were a few people already there, when they got to the bridge. And the man in uniform was there too.
The water had gone down a lot, and they worked on something new. This time, they didn't work where the supports had been, but spent the day breaking up the old bridge. Some pieces his father piled up, to keep the stream from washing away his new supports. The rest of the pieces he tossed up to Baartock, who piled them beside the road. It was a long hard day, and Baartock fell asleep in the car on the way home.
The next day, both of Baartock's parents went off with Mrs. Jackson to look at the stone they were going to build with. Baartock didn't go along. He wanted to work on his bridge. Now that the stream had gone down, he could fix it the way he wanted to. It was fun, but now that he was working on a real bridge, his own seemed very small.
He went to school the next morning, but after school, instead of riding home on Mr. Barnes' bus, he went to help his parents work on the new bridge. He spent the rest of the afternoon helping pile up the broken pieces of the old bridge.
For the rest of that week and for several weeks after, Baartock spent his days in school and his afternoons and weekends working on the bridge. For a while, trucks came, bringing blocks of stone, and big timbers they would use for supports, building the bridge. They brought enough stone to make a hill of stone, until his father said that was enough.
In those weeks, the crowd that came to watch the bridge being built grew bigger, and there were more men in uniform to keep them back. The pile of stone got smaller and the bridge got closer to being finished. Somehow, word had gotten out that trolls were building a bridge. A lot of people didn't believe it, and others didn't care. Other people heard that a man, a woman, and a boy were building a bridge by themselves, and came to watch. A few people tried to push their way past the men in uniform to talk to Baartock's parents while they were working.
Then one afternoon, right after lunch, Mrs. Jackson came to get Baartock from class. He was surprised when she said that they were going to the bridge. He usually didn't go until school was over. As they went out to the parking lot, they went past several school busses parked in front of the school. He thought one of the busses was Mr. Barnes's, but they didn't go to it. They went to her car and drove to the bridge.
When they got there, there was a big crowd just standing around one end of the bridge. Baartock's parents were standing in the middle of the bridge, but they weren't working. Baartock looked at the bridge. It looked finished, but as he walked over, he saw that there was one block missing from one side, and that block was lying on the sidewalk.