Early Candlelight

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V IKE seeds sprouting one by one along a furrow, the Ltiny cabins rose along the eastern bank of the river. After a year, the line of settlement had passed Fountain Cave, crossed the tamarack swamp, jumped gorges and ravines, slipped beneath the white cliffs by which the Indians for untold generations had designated the place, and reached the slough which the Canadians called the Grand Marais. Here another little group of voyageurs deposited their families and marked out a cluster of small farms. Once more Pig’s Eye Parrant headed the procession. He lost the claim by Fountain Cave for a ninety dollar debt. The DuGays rejoiced, and Pig’s Eye was not greatly troubled. He was willing enough to take his illicit trade in whiskey, his marble-like blind eye, his leering other eye, and his swollen face down to a more remote place. But the new claim did not stay remote. As before, settlers followed at his heels. And what was worse for his purpose, the scattered farms gained that year a new cohesion. There was no thought of a village yet, nor even of a hamlet; but distant as they were from the once protecting fort, and dwarfed and humbled by the mighty river rolling before them and the beetling cliffs rising behind, the cabins had v LIKE seeds sprouting one by one along a furrow, the tiny cabins rose along the eastern bank of the river. Mter a year, the line of settlement had passed Fountain Cave, crossed the tamarack swamp, jumped gorges and ravines, slipped beneath the white cliffs by which the Indians for untold generations had designated the place, and reached the slough which the Canadians called the Grand Marais. Here another little group of voyageurs deposited their families and marked out a cluster of small farms. Once more Pig's Eye Parrant headed the procession. He lost the claim by Fountain Cave for a ninety dollar debt. The DuGays rejoiced, and Pig's Eye was not greatly troubled. He was willing enough to take his illicit trade in whiskey, his marble-like blind eye, his leering other eye, and his swollen face down to a more remote place. But the new claim did not stay remote. As before, settlers followed at his heels. And what was worse for his purpose, the scattered farms gained that year a new cohesion. There was no thought of a village yet, nor even of a hamlet; but distant as they were from the once protecting fort, and dwarfed and humbled by the mighty river rolling before them and the beetling cliffs rising behind, the cabins had 178 v LIKE seeds sprouting one by one along a furrow, the tiny cabins rose along the eastern bank of the river. Mter a year, the line of settlement had passed Fountain Cave, crossed the tamarack swamp, jumped gorges and ravines, slipped beneath the white cliffs by which the Indians for untold generations had designated the place, and reached the slough which the Canadians called the Grand Marais. Here another little group of voyageurs deposited their families and marked out a cluster of small farms. Once more Pig's Eye Parrant headed the procession. He lost the claim by Fountain Cave for a ninety dollar debt. The DuGays rejoiced, and Pig's Eye was not greatly troubled. He was willing enough to take his illicit trade in whiskey, his marble-like blind eye, his leering other eye, and his swollen face down to a more remote place. But the new claim did not stay remote. As before, settlers followed at his heels. And what was worse for his purpose, the scattered farms gained that year a new cohesion. There was no thought of a village yet, nor even of a hamlet; but distant as they were from the once protecting fort, and dwarfed and humbled by the mighty river rolling before them and the beetling cliffs rising behind, the cabins had EARLY CANDLELIGHT I79 a need to unite; and they united in the inevitable way. Death and birth and love, wielding an invisible needle on an invisible thread, drew them together. The gentle Sergeant Hays was found floating in the river, his gashed face turned from the sky. And although the careless justice of a wild country took no immediate action against Phalan, who promptly settled on the dead man’s claim, a common sense of horror at the crime drew the settlers closer. And they drew closer in their...