Proficient as a pathfinder, he had easily discovered some other way of provisioning his house from the settlements than by the ordinary trails past Collinson's or Skinner's, which would have betrayed his vicinity.

But recluses are not usually accompanied by young daughters, whose relations with the world, not being as antagonistic, would make them uncertain companions.

Why not a wife?
His presumption of the extreme youth of the face he had seen at the window was after all only based upon the slipper he had found.

And if a wife, whose absolute acceptance of such confined seclusion might be equally uncertain, why not somebody else's wife?
Here was a reason for concealment, and the end of an episode, not unknown even in the wilderness.

And here was the work of the Nemesis who had overtaken them in their guilty contentment! The story, even to its moral, was complete.