Arthur Sherburne Hardy

“ He observed that her camp kitchen bore no resemblance to the slovenly back doors in Caranac, and while Isaac wore no ruffles he loved clear-running water and re-made his balsam bed religiously once a week. Nor did ever any one in Caranac sing as Maggie did while scouring pots—not "perky like," as did Alexina at the church sociables, but "just nat'iral and unconsarned," as the thrush sings at nightfall, heedless of audience. He likened it to the brook that sang to nobody, hurrying to the lazy reaches of the Upper Snake River. ”

“ That he had given up his position as chief guide to the party on Faraway Lake, that, always scrupulously honest, he had engaged old Sabattis and his wife to fill the vacancies created by his matrimonial venture, that he and the avenging angel of slighted womanhood had vanished in the dusk of the river after their brief interview with the justice of the peace, was gradually forgotten, and over the honeymoon on the Upper Snake silence brooded like the fog in its valley. ”

“ If romance existed in Caranac, as undoubtedly it did, it was as an invisible undertow, obscured by the surface agitation of a monotonous life chiefly devoted to keeping the body warm and fed, and escaping the onset of black flies and midges. But books disclosed horizons hidden by Caranac woods, and emotions unknown to its hand-to-mouth inhabitants. Were they realities or phantoms? What the devil was the Ego anyway!
III
With Maggie's advent Reality crowded fiction from the place of honor and the lure of the book-shelf dwindled. ”

“ WHEN Isaac of Caranac married, the woods laughed. Even the old otter who had lost a claw in one of his [traps] smiled sardonically at the sight of Maggie's skirt on the Upper Snake River. Caranac heard the news with undisguised satisfaction; for the taciturn, self-contained man had been brought low and reduced to the level of ordinary humanity. ”