He poked through the caked mud around the grounds and found almost nothing he could recognize.  He scuffed along through the ashes and kicked up one of hte spikes he'd used in building the cabins's walls, but couldn't find any others.

He saw no sign of their Bible, either.  If the Lord had failed to protect even the book of his own Word, this proved to Grainier that here had come a fire stronger than God.

Denis Johnson, Train Dreams pg. 45

"When a trout rising to a fly gets hooked on a line and finds himself unable to swim about freely, he begins with a fight which results in struggles and splashes and sometimes an escape. Often, of course, the situation is too tough for him.

"In the same way the human begin struggles with his environment and with the hooks that catch him. Sometimes he masters his difficulties; sometimes they are too much for him. His struggles are all that the world sees and it naturally misunderstands them. It is hard for a free fish to understand what is happening to a hooked one."

-Karl A. Menninger