Harry Castlemon

“ The scene of their camp was a spring-hole, located deep in the forest twelve miles from Indian Lake. Although it was a noted place for trout, it was seldom visited by the guests of the hotels for the simple reason that they did not know that there was such a spring-hole in existence, and the guides were much too sharp to tell them of it.
Hotel guides, as a class, are not fond of work, and neither will they take a guest very far beyond the sound of their employer's dinner horn. ”

“ Nearly all the guides cultivated little patches of ground and raised a few pigs and chickens, and when their duties called them away from home there was no one left to guard their property except their wives and children. The latter could not stand watch day and night, and consequently it was no trouble at all for Matt and his hopeful sons to rob a hen-roost or a smokehouse as often as they felt like it. But, as it happened, the very first foraging expedition he sent out, after he made his new camp about two miles from Indian Lake, resulted most disastrously for Matt Coyle. ”

“ Now we know that Matt didn't tell the truth when he said that Joe Wayring's father would not let any one live on his land except those who had money to pay for the privilege. Mr. Wayring was one of the most liberal citizens in Mount Airy. Nearly all the men who were employed as guides and boatmen by the summer visitors lived in neat little cottages that he had built on purpose for them, and for which he never charged them a cent of rent ”

“ Loren and Ralph Farnsworth, however, were not willing to go as far as that, knowing, as they did, that arson was a State's prison offense, but they agreed to Tom's proposition to break into the boathouse and carry off "that old canvas canoe that Joe seemed to think so much of," because they could do as much mischief of that sort as they pleased, and no blame would be attached to them. It would all be laid at Matt Coyle's door. ”

“ Time will show.
If you have read the first volume of the "Forest and Stream Series," you will recollect that the story it contained was told by "Old Durability," Joe Wayring's Fly-rod. In concluding his interesting narrative, Fly-rod said that he would step aside and give place to his "accommodating friend," the Canvas Canoe, who, in the second volume of the series, would describe some of the incidents that came under his notice while he was a prisoner in the hands of the Indian Lake vagabonds. Matt Coyle and his two worthless boys, Jake and Sam. ”

“ The truth was they drank more whisky than water, and guides of that sort were not wanted in Mount Airy.
Matt and his boys next tried fishing as a means of earning a livelihood; but no one could have made his salt at that, because the guests sojourning at the hotels and boarding houses, with the assistance of the regular guides, kept all the tables abundantly supplied. This second failure made the squatters angry, and they concluded that affairs about Mount Airy were not properly managed, and they would "run the town" to suit themselves. ”

“ The landlords hire them by the month and the guides get just so much money, no matter whether their services are called into requisition or not. If business is dull and the guests few in number, the guides loaf around the hotel in idleness, and of course the less they do the less they are inclined to do. ”

“ There ain't nary one of 'em broke loose yet, an' if any one of them p'inters an' hound dogs that we've heared givin' tongue in the woods ever lost their bearin's I don' know it, fur they never come nigh me. ”