The Project Gutenberg EBook of His "Day In Court", by
Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

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Title: His "Day In Court"
1895

Author: Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

Illustrator: A. B. Frost

Release Date: November 26, 2007 [EBook #23633]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HIS "DAY IN COURT" ***

Produced by David Widger

HIS "DAY IN COURT"

By Charles Egbert Craddock

1895

It had been a hard winter along the slopes of the Great Smoky Mountains,
and still the towering treeless domes were covered with snow, and the
vagrant winds were abroad, rioting among the clifty heights where they
held their tryst, or raiding down into the sheltered depths of the Cove,
where they seldom intruded. Nevertheless, on this turbulent rush was
borne in the fair spring of the year. The fragrance of the budding
wild-cherry was to be discerned amidst the keen slanting javelins of
the rain. A cognition of the renewal and the expanding of the forces of
nature pervaded the senses as distinctly as if one might hear the grass
growing, or feel along the chill currents of the air the vernal pulses
thrill. Night after night in the rifts of the breaking clouds close to
the horizon was glimpsed the stately sidereal Virgo, prefiguring and
promising the harvest, holding in her hand a gleaming ear of corn.
But it was not the constellation which the tumultuous torrent at the
mountain's base reflected in a starry glitter. From the hill-side above
a light cast its broken image among the ripples, as it shone for an
instant through the bosky laurel, white, stellular, splendid--only a
tallow dip suddenly placed in the window of a log-cabin, and as suddenly
withdrawn.

For a gruff voice within growled out a remonstrance: "What ye doin' that
fur, Steve? Hev that thar candle got enny call ter bide in that thar
winder?"

The interior, contrary to the customary aspect of the humble homes of
the region, was in great disarray. Cooking utensils stood uncleaned
about the hearth; dishes and bowls of earthen-ware were assembled upon
the table in such numbers as to suggest