The Project Gutenberg EBook of The King Of Beaver, and Beaver Lights, by
Mary Hartwell Catherwood

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Title: The King Of Beaver, and Beaver Lights
From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899

Author: Mary Hartwell Catherwood

Release Date: October 30, 2007 [EBook #23256]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by David Widger

THE KING OF BEAVER AND BEAVER LIGHTS

From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899

By Mary Hartwell Catherwood

THE KING OF BEAVER

Success was the word most used by the King of Beaver. Though he stood
before his people as a prophet assuming to speak revelations, executive
power breathed from him. He was a tall, golden-tinted man with a head
like a dome, hair curling over his ears, and soft beard and mustache
which did not conceal a mouth cut thin and straight. He had student
hands, long and well kept. It was not his dress, though that was careful
as a girl's, which set him apart from farmers listening on the benches
around him, but the keen light of his blue eyes, wherein shone the
master.

Emeline thought she had never before seen such a man. He had an
attraction which she felt loathsome, and the more so because it drew
some part of her irresistibly to him. Her spirit was kin to his, and she
resented that kinship, trying to lose herself among farmers' wives and
daughters, who listened to their Prophet stolidly, and were in no danger
of being naturally selected by him. This moral terror Emeline could not
have expressed in words, and she hid it like a shame. She also resented
the subservience of her kinspeople to one no greater than herself. Her
stock had been masters of men.

As the King of Beaver slowly turned about the circle he encountered this
rebel defying his assumption, and paused in his speaking a full minute,
the drowsy farmers seeing merely that notes were being shifted and
rearranged on the table. Then he began again, the dictatorial key
transposed into melody. His covert message was to the new maid in the
congregation. She might struggle like a fly in a web. He wrapped her
around and around with beautiful sentences. As Speaker