They were not alone in those northern woods. Everywhere along the rivers
and on the shores of little lakes they found people, to Sam a new kind of
people, who dropped all the ordinary things of life, and ran away to the
woods and the streams to spend long happy months in the open. He
discovered with surprise that these adventurers were men of modest
fortunes, small manufacturers, skilled workingmen, retail merchants. One
with whom he talked was a grocer from a town in Ohio, and when Sam asked
him if the coming to the woods with his family for an eight-weeks stay did
not endanger the success of his business he agreed with Sam that it did,
nodding his head and laughing.
"But there would be a lot more danger in not leaving it," he said, "the
danger of having my boys grow up to be men without my having any real fun
with them."
Among all of the people they met Sue passed with a sort of happy freedom
that confounded Sam, as he had formed a habit of thinking of her always as
one shut within herself. Many of the people they saw she knew, and he came
to believe that she had chosen the place for their love making because she
admired and held in high favour the lives of these people of the out-of-
doors and wanted her lover to be in some way like them.
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