On a day like this, when everything in life was singing, she must sing too.

Not a mile away was a hut by the river where her father had brought his family for the summer's fishing; not a half-mile away was a tent which Carnac Grier's father had set up as he passed northward on his tour of inspection.

This particular river, and this particular part of the river, were trying to the river-man and his clans.

It needed a dam, and the great lumber-king was planning to make one not three hundred yards from where they were.
The boy and the girl resting idly upon a great warm rock had their own business to consider.

The boy kept looking at his boots with the brass-tipped toes.