The Wiving of Lance Cleaverage

								


Produced by Elaine Laizure from images generously made
available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.

The Wiving of Lance Cleaverage
By
Alice MacGowan
Author of
"Judith of the Cumberlands," "The Last Word," "Huldah,"
"Return," etc.
With Illustrations in Colour by Robert Edwards
G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press
1909
Copyright, 1909
ALICE MacGOWAN
The Knickerbocker Press, New York

To
Emma Bell Miles
WHO COULD WITHOUT DOUBT HAVE WRITTEN
MUCH BETTER THIS STORY OF HER OWN HOME COUNTRY
THE BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED
BY
The Author

CONTENTS
I. A Pair of Haggards 1
II. The Up-Sitting 19
III. The Burying 39
IV. A Dance and a Serenade 50
V. The Asking 70
VI. The Wedding 88
VII. Lance's Laurel 104
VIII. The Infare 124
IX. The Interloper 140
X. Poverty Pride 154
XI. "Long Sweetenin'" 168
XII. "What Shall He Have Who Killed the Deer?" 182
XIII. Broken Chords 193
XIV. Roxy Griever's Guest 211
XV. A Stubborn Heart 223
XVI. Lance Cleaverage's Son 237
XVII. The Coasts of the Island 247
XVIII. The Hegira 266
XIX. Callista Cleaverage Goes Home 277
XX. Drawn Blank 293
XXI. Flenton Hands 300
XXII. The Speech of People 309
XXIII. Buck Fuson's Idea 321
XXIV. Silenced 330
XXV. The Flight 340
XXVI. Roxy Griever 345
XXVII. In Hiding 357
XXVIII. The Sheriff Scores 371
XXIX. The Island at Last 377

Illustrations
"I was just a-studyin' on the matter." Frontispiece
"A Face, Passion-Pale, was Raised to him, and Eager, Tremulous
Lips Met his." 66
"You'll Marry us now--or not at all." 98
"He Placed the Instrument in Ola's Grasp." 202
"He Gazed long at Callista's Face on the Pillow." 246
"He Broke off, Staring with Open Mouth." 336

The Wiving of Lance Cleaverage

CHAPTER I.
A PAIR OF HAGGARDS.

NOON of summer in the highlands of Tennessee; the Cumberlands,
robed in the mid-season's green, flashed here and there with
banding and gemming of waters. The two Turkey Track Mountains,
Big and Little, lying side by side and one running so evenly
from the other that only the dweller upon them knew where to
differentiate, basked in the full glow of a Sabbath morning
radiance.
A young fellow of twenty-three, crossing the crown of a higher
hill, tonsured years ago by the axe of some settler, but offering
half way up its side resistance of undergrowth and saplings,
paused a moment in the open to look down. Below him the first
church bell had just rung in the little gray structure across
the creek. Shining above the ocean of woods and the cabin homes
that, like islets, dotted the forest at wide intervals, the Sabbath
sun caught and lightened upon something [2] bright, swung upon the
newcomer's back. Himself as yet unseen, he gazed down upon this
his world, spread map-like below him. He could pick out everybody's
home. Each one of those cabins wore to-day, from porch floors