The voice that
called was young and vibrant, and had in it the simple, true soul of
things. It had the clearness of a bugle-call-ample and full of life and
all life's possibilities. It laughed; it challenged; it decoyed.
Carnac heard the summons and did his best to catch the girl in the wood
by the tumbling stream, where he had for many an hour emptied out his
wayward heart; where he had seen his father's logs and timbers caught in
jams, hunched up on rocky ledges, held by the prong of a rock, where
man's purpose could, apparently, avail so little. Then he had watched
the black-bearded river-drivers with their pike-poles and their levers
loose the key-logs of the bunch, and the tumbling citizens of the woods
and streams toss away down the current to the wider waters below. He was
only a lad of fourteen, and the girl was only eight, but she--Junia--was
as spry and graceful a being as ever woke the echoes of a forest.
He was only fourteen, but already he had visions and dreamed dreams. His
father--John Grier--was the great lumber-king of Canada, and Junia was
the child of a lawyer who had done little with his life, but had had
great joy of his two daughters, who were dear to him beyond telling.
Carnac was one of Nature's freaks or accidents.
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