In the Tennessee mountains

by Charles Egbert Craddock

Following the voice of the Lord, Cynthia took her way along a sandy bridle-path that penetrates the dense forests of Pine Mountain. The soft spring wind, fluttering in beneath her sun-bonnet, found the first wild-rose blooming on her thin cheek. A new light shone like a steadfast star in her deep brown eyes. "I hev took a-holt," she said resolutely, "an' I'll never gin it up. 'Twarn't his deed, an' I'll prove that, agin his own word. I dunno how,—but I'll prove it."

The woods seemed to open at last, for the brink of the ridge was close at hand. As the trees were marshaled down the steep declivity, she could see above their heads the wide and splendid mountain landscape, with the benediction of the spring upon it, with the lofty peace of the unclouded sky above it, with an impressive silence pervading it that was akin to a holy solemnity.

There was a rocky, barren slope to the left, and among the brambly ledges sheep were feeding. As the flock caught her attention she experienced a certain satisfaction. "They hed sheep in the Lord's life-time," she observed. "He gins a word 'bout'n them more'n enny other critter."

And she sat down on a rock, among the harmless creatures, and was less lonely and forlorn.

A little log house surmounted the slope. It was quaintly awry, like most of the mountaineers' cabins, and the ridgepole, with its irregularly projecting clapboards serrating the sky behind it, described a negligently oblique line. Its clay chimney had a leaning tendency, and was propped to its duty by a long pole. There was a lofty martin-house, whence the birds whirled fitfully. The rail fence inclosing the dooryard was only a few steps from the porch. There rested the genial afternoon sunshine. It revealed the spinning-wheel that stood near the wall; the shelf close to the door, with a pail of water and a gourd for the incidentally thirsty; the idle churn, its dasher on another shelf to dry; a rooster strutting familiarly in at the open door; and a newly hatched brood picking about among the legs of the splint-bottomed chairs, under the guidance of a matronly old "Dominicky hen." In one of the chairs sat a man, emaciated, pallid, swathed in many gay-colored quilts, and piping querulously in a high, piercing key to a worn and weary woman, who came to the fence and looked down the hill as he feebly pointed.

"Cynthy—Cynthy Ware!" she called out, "air that you-uns?"

Cynthia hesitated, then arose and went forward a few steps. "It be me," she said, as if making an admission.

"Kem up hyar. Jube's wantin' ter know why ye hain't been hyar ter inquire arter him." The woman waited at the gate, and opened it for her visitor. She looked hardly less worn and exhausted than the broken image of a man in the chair. "Jube counts up every critter in the mountings ez kems ter inquire arter him," she added, in a lower voice. "'Pears-like ter me ez it air about time fur worldly pride ter hev loosed a-holt on him; but Satan kin foster guile whar thar ain't enough life left fur nuthin' else, an' pore Jube hev never been so gin over ter the glory o' this world ez now."

"He 'pears ter be gittin' on some," said the girl, although she hardly recognized in the puny, pallid apparition among the muffling quilts the bluff and hale mountaineer she had known.

"Fust-rate!" weakly piped out the constable. "I eat a haffen pone o' bread fur dinner!" Then he turned querulously to his wife: "Jane Elmiry, ain't ye goin' ter git me that thar fraish aig ter whip up in whiskey, like the doctor said?"