Carnac's Folly, Complete. Gilbert Parker

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CHAPTER I. IN THE DAYS OF CHILDHOOD

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      “Carnac! Carnac! Come and catch me, Carnac!” It was a day of perfect summer and hope and happiness in the sweet, wild world behind the near woods and the far circle of sky and pine and hemlock. 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. He was physically strong and daring, but, as a boy, mentally he lacked СКАЧАТЬ