Judith of the Cumberlands

								

Contents
CHAPTER                              PAGE

     I.  Spring                         1

    II.  At "The Edge"                 20

   III.  Suitors                       47

    IV.  Building                      64

     V.  The Red Rose and the Briar    83

    VI.  The Play-Party                99

   VII.  Kisses                       112
VIII.  On the Doorstone             124

    IX.  Foeman's Bluff               135

     X.  A Spy                        152

    XI.  The Warning                  161

   XII.  In the Lion's Den            181
XIII.  In the Night                 199

   XIV.  The Raid                     207

    XV.  Council of War               221

   XVI.  A Message                    235
XVII.  The Old Cherokee Trail       244
XVIII.  Bitter Parting               261

   XIX.  Cast Out                     273

    XX.  A Conversion                 282

   XXI.  The Baptising                302
XXII.  Ebb-Tide                     315
XXIII.  The Dumb Supper              326
XXIV.  A Case of Walking Typhoid    340

   XXV.  A Perilous Passage           360
XXVI.  His Own Trap                 371
XXVII.  Love's Guerdon               382
XXVIII.  A Prophecy                   393

Judith of the Cumberlands
Chapter I
Spring

"Won't you be jest dressed to kill an' cripple when you get that on!
Don't it set her off, Jeffy Ann?"
The village milliner fell back, hands on hips, thin lips screwed up, and
regarded the possible purchaser through narrowed eyes of simulated
ecstasy.
"I don't know," debated the brown beauty, surveying herself in a
looking-glass by means of an awkwardly held hand-mirror. "'Pears to me
this one's too little. Hit makes me look like I was sent for and couldn't
come. But I do love red. I think the red on here is mightly sightly."
Instantly the woman of the shop had the hat off the dark young head and
in her own hands.
"This is a powerful pretty red bow," she assented promptly. "I can take
it out just as easy as not, and tack it onto that big hat you like. I
believe you're right; and red certainly does go with yo' hair and eyes."
Again she gazed with languishing admiration at her customer.
And Judith Barrier was well worth it, tall, justly proportioned,
deep-bosomed, long-limbed, with the fine hands and feet of the true
mountaineer. The thick dusk hair rose up around her brow in a massive,
sculptural line; her dark eyes--the large, heavily fringed eyes of a
dryad--glowed with the fires of youth, and with a certain lambent shining
which was all their own; the stain on her cheeks was deep, answering to
the ripe red of the full lips.
In point of fact Mrs. Rhody Staggart the milliner considered her a big,
coarse country girl, and thought that a pair of stout corsets well pulled
in would improve her crude figure; but she dealt out compliments without
ceasing as she exchanged the red bow for the blue, and laboriously pinned