An eagle that rose from the fir-clad ridge above the clearing might from its eminence, have seen other human habitations, but such sight was denied to the dwellers in the rude log-house on the clearing.

The eagle wheeled in the air and flew southward.

A girl standing near the log-house watched it with discontented eyes.
The blue water of the lake, with ceaseless lapping, cast up glinting reflections of the cold sunlight.

Down the hillside a stream ran to join the lake, and it was on the more sheltered slope by this stream, where grey-limbed maple trees grew, that the cabin stood.

Above and around, the steeper slopes bore only fir trees, whose cone-shaped or spiky forms, sometimes burnt and charred, sometimes dead and grey, but for the most part green and glossy, from shore and slope and ridge pointed always to the blue zenith.
The log-house, with its rougher sheds, was hard by the stream's ravine.
About the other sides of it stretched a few acres of tilled land.