The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Frontiersmen, by Charles Egbert Craddock

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Title: The Frontiersmen

Author: Charles Egbert Craddock

Release Date: October 12, 2004 [eBook #13724]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FRONTIERSMEN***

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THE FRONTIERSMEN

by

CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK

Author of _A Spectre of Power_, _The Prophet of the Great Smoky
Mountains_, _In the Tennessee Mountains_, etc.

1904

CONTENTS

THE LINGUISTER

A VICTOR AT CHUNGKE

THE CAPTIVE OF THE ADA-WEHI

THE FATE OF THE CHEERA-TAGHE

THE BEWITCHED BALL-STICKS

THE VISIT OF THE TURBULENT GRANDFATHER

NOTES

THE LINGUISTER

The mental image of the world is of individual and varying compass. It
may be likened to one of those curious Chinese balls of quaintly carved
ivory, containing other balls, one within another, the proportions ever
dwindling with each successive inclosure, yet each a more minute
duplicate of the external sphere. This might seem the least world of
all,--the restricted limits of the quadrangle of this primitive
stockade,--but Peninnah Penelope Anne Mivane had known no other than
such as this. It was large enough for her, for a fairy-like face, very
fair, with golden brown hair, that seemed to have entangled the
sunshine, and lustrous brown eyes, looked out of an embrasure (locally
called "port-hole") of the blockhouse, more formidable than the swivel
gun once mounted there, commanding the entrance to the stockade gate.
Her aspect might have suggested that Titania herself had resorted to
military methods and was ensconced in primitive defenses. It was even
large enough for her name, which must have been conferred upon her, as
the wits of the Blue Lick Station jocularly averred, in the hope of
adding some size to her. It was large enough also for the drama of
battle and the tragedy of bloody death--both had befallen within its
limits.

There had been a night, glooming very dark in the past, an unwary night
when the row of l