[He Insisted That They Should Shake Hands as on a Solemn Compact]
[The United Weight and Impetus of the Onset Burst the Flimsy Doors into Fragments]
[With One Hand Holding Back Her Dense Yellow Hair ... She Looked Up at Him]
THE RAID OF THE GUERILLA
Judgment day was coming to Tanglefoot Cove—somewhat in advance of the expectation of the rest of the world. Immediate doom impended. A certain noted guerilla, commanding a reckless troop, had declared a stern intention of raiding this secluded nook among the Great Smoky Mountains, and its denizens could but tremble at the menace.
Few and feeble folk were they. The volunteering spirit rife in the early days of the Civil War had wrought the first depletion in the number. Then came, as time wore on, the rigors of the conscription, with an extension of the limits of age from the very young to the verge of the venerable, thus robbing, as was said, both the cradle and the grave. Now only the ancient weaklings and the frail callow remained of the male population among the women and girls, who seemed mere supernumeraries in the scheme of creation, rated by the fitness to bear arms.
So feeble a community of non-combatants might hardly compass a warlike affront calculated to warrant reprisal, but the predominant Union spirit of East Tennessee was all a-pulse in the Cove, and the deed was no trifle.
"'T war Ethelindy's deed," her grandfather mumbled, his quivering lips close to the knob of his stick, on which his palsied, veinous hands trembled as he sat in his arm-chair on the broad hearth of the main room in his little log cabin.