The Project Gutenberg EBook of 'way Down In Lonesome Cove, by
Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

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Title: 'way Down In Lonesome Cove
1895

Author: Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

Illustrator: A. B. Frost

Release Date: November 26, 2007 [EBook #23632]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 'WAY DOWN IN LONESOME COVE ***

Produced by David Widger

'WAY DOWN IN LONESOME COVE

By Charles Egbert Craddock

1895

One memorable night in Lonesome Cove the ranger of the county entered
upon a momentous crisis in his life. What hour it was he could hardly
have said, for the primitive household reckoned time by the sun when it
shone, by the domestic routine when no better might be. It was late.
The old crone in the chimney-corner nodded over her knitting. In the
trundle-bed at the farther end of the shadowy room were transverse
billows under the quilts, which intimated that the small children were
numerous enough for the necessity of sleeping crosswise. He had smoked
out many pipes, and at last knocked the cinder from the bowl. The great
hickory logs had burned asunder and fallen from the stones that served
as andirons. He began to slowly cover the embers with ashes, that the
fire might keep till morning.

His wife, a faded woman, grown early old, was bringing the stone jar of
yeast to place close by the hearth, that it might not "take a chill" in
some sudden change of the night. It was heavy, and she bent in carrying
it. Awkward, and perhaps nervous, she brought it sharply against the
shovel in his hands.

The clash roused the old crone in the corner.

She recognized the situation instantly, and the features that sleep had
relaxed into inexpressiveness took on a weary apprehension, which they
wore like a habit. The man barely raised his surly black eyes, but his
wife drew back humbly with a mutter of apology.

The next moment the shovel was almost thrust out of his grasp. A tiny
barefooted girl, in a straight unbleached cotten night-gown and a quaint
little cotton night-cap, cavalierly pushed him aside, that she might
cover in the hot ashes a bur