The Project Gutenberg EBook of Dixie Hart, by Will N. Harben

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Title: Dixie Hart

Author: Will N. Harben

Release Date: November 15, 2006 [EBook #19818]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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DIXIE HART

_By_ WILL N. HARBEN

Author of "The Redemption of Kenneth Galt," "Gilbert Neal,"
"Abner Daniel," "Pole Baker," etc.

[Illustration]

WITH FRONTISPIECE
A. L. BURT COMPANY
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
Published by arrangement with Harper & Brothers
Copyright, 1910, by HARPER & BROTHERS

* * * * *

TO THE MEMORY OF THE LATE
RICHARD WATSON GILDER, WHOSE
KINDLY APPRECIATION OF THE
CHARACTER OF "DIXIE HART" WAS MY
INSPIRATION IN WRITING THIS BOOK

* * * * *

DIXIE HART

CHAPTER I

In a blaze of splendor the morning sun broke over the mountain, throwing
its scraggy brown bowlders, spruce-pines, thorn-bushes, and tangled
vines into impenetrable shadow. Massed at the base and along the rocky
sides were mists as dense as clouds, through the filmy upper edges of
which the yellow light shone as through a mighty prism, dancing on the
dew-coated corn-blades, cotton-plants, and already drinking from the
fresh-ploughed, mellow soil of the farm-lands which fell away in gentle
undulations to the confines of the village hard by.

"A fellow couldn't ask for a prettier day than this, no matter how
greedy he was," Alfred Henley mused as he stood in the doorway of his
barn and heard the gnawing of the horses he had just fed in the stalls
behind him. A hundred yards distant, on the main-travelled road which
ran into the village of Chester, only half a mile away, stood his house,
the eight rooms of which were divided into two equal parts