SUDDEN RESOLUTION
V. THE HOUSE OF THE HONEYCOMBED TILES
VI. MADAME LA VICOMTESSE
VII. THE DISPOSAL OF THE SIEUR DE ST. GRE
VIII. AT LAMARQUE'S
IX. MONSIEUR LE BARON
X. THE SCOURGE
XI. "IN THE MIDST OF LIFE"
XII. VISIONS, AND AN AWAKENINGS
XIII. A MYSTERY
XIV. "TO UNPATHED WATERS, UNDREAMED SHORES"
XV. AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF A MAN

AFTERWORD

THE CROSSING

BOOK I

THE BORDERLAND

CHAPTER I

THE BLUE WALL

I was born under the Blue Ridge, and under that side which is blue in the
evening light, in a wild land of game and forest and rushing waters.
There, on the borders of a creek that runs into the Yadkin River, in a
cabin that was chinked with red mud, I came into the world a subject of
King George the Third, in that part of his realm known as the province of
North Carolina.

The cabin reeked of corn-pone and bacon, and the odor of pelts. It had
two shakedowns, on one of which I slept under a bearskin. A rough stone
chimney was reared outside, and the fireplace was as long as my father
was tall. There was a crane in it, and a bake kettle; and over it great
buckhorns held my father's rifle when it was not in use. On other horns
hung jerked bear's meat and venison hams, and gourds for drinking cups,
and bags of seed, and my father's best hunting shirt; also, in a
neglected corner, several articles of woman's attire from pegs. These
once belonged to my mother. Among them was a gown of silk, of a fine,
faded pattern, over which I was wont to speculate. The women at the
Cross-Roads, twelve miles away, were dressed in coarse butternut wool and
huge sunbonnets. But when I questioned my father on these matters he
would give me no answers.

My father was--how shall I say what he was? To this day I can only
surmise many things of him. He was a Scotchman born, and I know now that
he had a slight Scotch accent. At the time of which I write, my early
childhood, he was a frontiersman and hunter. I can see him now, with his
hunting shirt and leggings and moccasins; his powder horn, engraved with
wondrous scenes; his bullet pouch and tomahawk and hunting knife. He was
a tall, lean man with a strange, sad face. And he talked little save
when he drank too many "horns," as they were called in that country.
These lapses of my father's were a perpetual source of wonder to
me,--and, I must say, of delight. They occurred only when a passing
traveller who hit his fancy chanced t