Charles Egbert Craddock

“ He was very near the forge when his senses were roused by some inexplicable inward monition. He stood still to listen: only the insects droning in the chestnut-oaks, only the wind astir in the laurel. The night possessed the earth. The mountains were sunk in an indistinguishable gloom, save where the horizontal line of their summits asserted itself against an infinitely clear sky. But for a hunter's horn, faintly wound and faintly echoed in Lost Creek Valley, he might have seemed the only human creature in all the vast wilderness. He saw through the pine boughs the red moon rising. ”

“ The red moon turned to gold in the sky, and the world was flooded with a gentle splendor; and as the hours went by no louder sound broke upon the gilded dusk than the throb of the cataract, pulsing like the heart of the mountains, and the stir of the wind about the rude hut where the wounded man had been carried.
When Rufus Chadd opened his eyes upon the awe-stricken faces that clustered about the bed, he had no need to be reminded of what had happened. The wave of life, which it seemed would have carried him so far, had left him stranded here in the ebb, while all the world sailed on. ”

“ Sometimes the forest was dumb; the sun glittered frigidly, and the pines, every tiny needle encased in ice, shone like a wilderness of gleaming rays. The crags were begirt with gigantic icicles; the air was crystalline and cold, and the only sound was the clinking of the hand-hammer and the clanking of the sledge from the forge on the mountain's brink. For there was a new striker there, of whom Pete Blenkins did not stand in awe. He felt peculiarly able to cope with the world in general since his experience had been enriched by a recent trip to Sparta. ”

“ Celia Shaw had heard no more of that momentous conversation than he; a wide contrast was suggested. He began to have a glimmering perception that despite all his culture, his sensibility, his yearnings toward humanity, he was not so high a thing in the scale of being; that he had placed a false estimate upon himself. He had looked down on her with a mingled pity for her dense ignorance, her coarse surroundings, her low station, and a dilettante's delight in picturesque effects, and with no recognition of the moral splendors of that star in the valley. ”

“ But as he glanced out of the door, and saw her trudging down the road, all her grace and pliant swaying languor lost in convulsive, awkward haste and a feeble, jerky gait, he laughed.
For poor Cynthia had become in some sort a grotesque figure. Only Time can pose a crusader to picturesque advantage. The man or woman with a great and noble purpose carries about with it a pitiful little personality that reflects none of its lustre. ”

“ He piqued himself on the readiness with which he became interested in these people, entered into their thoughts and feelings, obtained a comprehensive idea of the machinery of life in this wilderness,—more complicated than one could readily believe, looking upon the changeless face of the wide, unpopulated expanse of mountain ranges stretching so far beneath that infinite sky. They appealed to him from the basis of their common humanity, he thought, and the pleasure of watching the development of the common human attributes in this peculiar and primitive state of society never palled upon him. ”

“ The red brick house is disorganized and dilapidated as of yore; a sense of loneliness broods upon it, hardly less intense than the loneliness of the mighty encompassing forest. Deep in these solitudes he often strolls for hours, most often in the crimson and purple eventides along the road that passes beneath Sunrise Rock and encircles the little graveyard of the mountaineers. Here Trelawney leans on the palings while the sun goes down, and looks, with his sore heart bleeding anew, upon one grassy mound till the shadows and the tears together blot it from his sight. ”

“ He encouraged himself in this bit of sentimentality. These unique eventide effects seemed a fitting sequel to the picturesque day, passed in hunting deer, with horn and hounds, through the gorgeous autumnal forest; or perchance in the more exciting sport in some rocky gorge with a bear at bay and the frenzied pack around him; or in the idyllic pleasures of bird-shooting with a thoroughly-trained dog; and coming back in the crimson sunset to a well-appointed tent and a smoking supper of venison or wild turkey,—the trophies of his skill. ”

“ How should he imagine what luminous and wistful eyes were turned upward to where another star burned,—the light of his camp-fire on the crag; what pathetic, beautiful eyes had learned to watch and wait for that red gleam high on the mountain's brow,—hardly below the stars in heaven it seemed! How could he dream of the strange, vague, unreasoning trouble with which his idle comings and goings had clouded that young life, a trouble as strange, as vague, as vast, as the limitless sky above her. ”

“ Trelawney was lounging against the rail fence in front of Teake's house, looking, in his negligent attire, like a prince in disguise, and talking to the mountaineers about a prospective deer-hunt. There was a surprised resentment on his face when Cleaver drove up, but the return of Selina with him made not a ripple among the Teakes. It would have been impossible to demonstrate to them that they stood on a lower social plane. Their standard of morality and respectability could not be questioned; there had never been a man or a woman of the humble name who had given the others cause for shame ”

“ He, at his age, using none of the means rightfully at his command, the gentle suasion of religion, must needs rush between armed men, wrench their weapons from their hands, threatening with such violence that an outlaw and desperado, recognizing a parallel of his own belligerent and lawless spirit, should say that he ought to belong to the gang! And the heaviest scourge of the sin-laden conscience was the perception that, so far as the unsubdued old Adam went, he ought indeed. ”

“ Dusky shadows, which seemed to be exhaled from the ground, rose higher and higher up the mountain side from the reservoir of gloom that lay in the valley. The sky was a lustrous contrast to the darkling earth. The sun still lingered, large and red, above the western summits; the clouds about it were gorgeous in borrowed color; even those hovering in the east had caught the reflection of the sunset splendor, and among their gold and crimson flakes swung the silver globe of the hunter's moon. ”

“ What would that girl," nodding toward the log-cabin near Sunrise Rock, "think of the girls of our world who pursue 'society' as a man pursues a profession, who shove and jostle each other and pull caps for the great matches, and 'put up' with the others when no better may be had? She is my ideal of a modest, delicate young girl,—and she is the only sincere woman I ever saw. Upon my soul, I think the primitive woman holds her own very finely in comparison with the resultant of feminine culture." ”

“ He turned from the strange picture, suspended between heaven and earth, and looked over the rickety palings into the dismal little graveyard of the mountaineers. Nowhere, he thought, was the mystery of life and death so gloomily suggested. Humanity seemed so small, so transitory a thing, expressed in these few mounds in the midst of the undying grandeur of the mountains. Material nature conquers; man and mind are as naught. ”

“ High above Lost Creek Valley towers a wilderness of pine. So dense is this growth that it masks the mountain whence it springs. Even when the Cumberland spurs, to the east, are gaunt and bare in the wintry wind, their deciduous forests denuded, their crags unveiled and grimly beetling, Pine Mountain remains a sombre, changeless mystery; its clifty heights are hidden, its chasms and abysses lurk unseen. Whether the skies are blue, or gray, the dark, austere line of its summit limits the horizon. It stands against the west like a barrier. ”

“ No creature could have been more coarsely habited: a green cotton dress, faded to the faintest hue; rough shoes, just visible beneath her skirts; a dappled gray and brown calico sun-bonnet, thrown aside on a moss-grown bowlder near at hand. But it seemed as if the wild nature about her had been generous to this being toward whom life and fortune had played the niggard. There were opaline lights in her dreamy eyes which one sees nowhere save in sunset clouds that brood above dark hills; the golden sunbeams, all faded from the landscape, had left a perpetual reflection in her bronze hair ”

“ Chevis took his way, in the last rays of sunshine, across the road and down the declivity in the direction indicated by the blacksmith. A cool gray shadow fell upon him from the heights of the great rocks, as he neared them; the narrow path leading from the road grew dank and moist, and presently his feet were sunk in the still green and odorous water-loving weeds, the clumps of fern, and the pungent mint. ”

“ Jubal Tynes had a bad night. He was restless and fretful, and sometimes, when he had been still for a while, and seemed about to sink into slumber, he would start up abruptly, declaring that he could not "git shet of studying 'bout 'n 'Vander, an' 'Lijah, an' the sledge," and violently wishing that Cynthia Ware had died before she ever came interrupting him about 'Vander, and 'Lijah, and the sledge. Toward morning exhaustion prevailed. He sank into a deep, dreamless sleep, from which he woke refreshed and interested in the matter of breakfast. ”

“ No light on earth save the far gleam from another man's home, and in heaven only the drowning face of the moon, drifting slowly through the blue floods of the skies. He was only twenty-five; he had youth and health and strength, but he felt that he had lived his life; it seemed long, marked as it was by cares and privation and persistent failure. Little as he knew of life, he knew how hard his had been, even meted by those of the poverty-stricken wretches among whom, his lot was cast. "An' sech luck!" ”

“ People were sordid, and petty, and coarse-minded; and society—his little clique that he called society—possessed a painfully predominating element of snobs; men who had given him no notice before were pleased to be noticed now, and yet the lucky partnership was covertly commented upon as the freak of an old man in his dotage. He was suddenly successful, he had suddenly a certain prospect of wealth, he was suddenly bitter. ”

“ The star in the valley was blotted from sight; the rising mists had crept to the verge of the crag; nay, in the undergrowth fringing the mountain's brink, there were softly clinging white wreaths.
"Is she pretty?" asked Chevis.
"Waal, no, she ain't," said Hi Bates, decisively. "She's a pore, no 'count critter." ”

“ Nathan White had few neighbors, but above the crackling of the timber and the roar of the flames there rose the quick beat of running footsteps; the undergrowth of the forest near at hand was in strange commotion; and at last, the figure of a man burst forth, the light of the fire showing the startling pallor of his face as he staggered to the little porch and sank, exhausted, into a chair.
"Waal, Caleb Hoxie!" exclaimed Nathan White, in good-natured raillery; "ye're skeered, fur true! What ails ye, ter think Old Rocky-Top air a-goin' ter ketch too? 'Tain't nigh dry enough, I'm a-thinkin'." ”

“ Sometimes his heart is not sore, only sad. Sometimes it is tender and resigned, and he turns to the sunrise emblazoned on the rock and thinks of the rising Sun of Righteousness with healing in his wings. ”

“ All through the interminable night he fled frantically along the mountain's summit, scarcely knowing whither, and caring for nothing except to multiply the miles between him and the frightful object that he believed lay under the bowlder which he had dashed down the precipice. The moon sank beneath the horizon ”

“ But over this gloomy primeval magnificence of nature universal suffrage brooded like a benison, and candidates munificently endowed with "face an' grace" were wont to thread the tangled mazes of Big Injun Mounting. ”

“ Human nature is the same everywhere, and the Wilkins settlement is a microcosm. The metropolitan centres, stripped of the civilization of wealth, fashion, and culture, would present only the bare skeleton of humanity outlined in Mrs. Johns's talk of Harrison's Cove, the Wilkins settlement, the enmities and scandals and sorrows and misfortunes of the mountain ridge. ”

“ An old man sat motionless on the fence, with as sober and business-like an aspect as if he did it for a salary. The porch was occupied by an indiscriminate collection of household effects,—cooking utensils, garments, broken chairs,—and an untidy, disheveled woman. An old crone, visible within the door, was leisurely preparing the evening meal. Cynthia's heart warmed at the sight of the familiar place. The tears started to her sympathetic eyes. "I hev kem ter tell ye all 'bout'n 'Vander!" ”

“ A responsive respect might have been induced by the contemplation of their pride, so intense that it recognizes no superior, so inordinate that one is tempted to cry out, Here are the true republicans! ”