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THE COPPERHEAD




BY HAROLD FREDERIC.


IN THE VALLEY.

    Illustrated by Howard Pyle      $1.50

THE LAWTON GIRL.

    12mo, paper, 50 cents; cloth    $1.25

SETH'S BROTHER'S WIFE.

    12mo                            $1.25

THE COPPERHEAD.

    12mo                            $1.00




THE COPPERHEAD


BY
HAROLD FREDERIC


NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1893




COPYRIGHT, 1893, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER                            PAGE
   I.   ABNER BEECH                   1

  II.   JEFF'S MUTINY                17

 III.   ABSALOM                      35

  IV.   ANTIETAM                     47

   V.   "JEE'S" TIDINGS              63

  VI.   NI'S TALK WITH ABNER         76

 VII.   THE ELECTION                 90

VIII.   THE ELECTION BONFIRE        106

  IX.   ESTHER'S VISIT              115

   X.   THE FIRE                    133

  XI.   THE CONQUEST OF ABNER       146

 XII.   THE UNWELCOME GUEST         158

XIII.   THE BREAKFAST               172

 XIV.   FINIS                       182




THE COPPERHEAD




CHAPTER I

ABNER BEECH


It was on the night of my thirteenth birthday, I know, that the old
farm-house was burned over our heads. By that reckoning I must have
been six or seven when I went to live with Farmer Beech, because at the
time he testified I had been with him half my life.

Abner Beech had often been supervisor for his town, and could have
gone to the Assembly, it was said, had he chosen. He was a stalwart,
thick-shouldered, big man, with shaggy dark eyebrows shading stern
hazel eyes, and with a long, straight nose, and a broad, firmly shut
mouth. His expansive upper lip was blue from many years of shaving; all
the rest was bushing beard, mounting high upon the cheeks and rolling
downward in iron-gray billows over his breast. That shaven upper lip,
which still may be found among the farmers of the old blood in our
district was, I dare say, a survival from the time of the Puritan
protest against the mustaches of the Cavaliers. If Abner Beech, in the
latter days, had been told that this shaving on Wednesday and Saturday
nights was a New England rite, I feel sure he would never have touched
razor again.

He was a well-to-do man in the earlier time--a tremendous worker, a
"good provider," a citizen of weight and substance in the community.
In all large matters the neighborhood looked to him to take the lead.
He was the first farmer roundabout to set a mowing-machine to work in
his meadows, and to put up lightning-rods on his buildings. At one
period he was, too, the chief pillar in the church, but that was before
the episode of the lightning-rods. Our little Union meeting-house
was supplied in those days by an irregular procession of itinerant
preachers, who came when the spirit moved and spoke with that entire
frankness which is induced by knowledge that the night is to be
spent somewhere else. One of these strolling ministers regarded all
attempts to protect property from lightning as an insolent defiance
of the Divine Will, and said so very pointedly in the pulpit, and the
congregation sat still and listened and grinned. Farmer Beech never
forgave them.

There came in good time other causes for ill-feeling. It is beyond
the power of my memory to pick out and arrange in proper sequence
the events which, in the final result, separated Abner Beech from
his fellows. My own recollections go with distinctness back to the
reception of the news that Virginia had hanged John Brown; in a vaguer
way they cover the two or three preceding years. Very likely Farmer
Beech had begun to fall out of touch with his neighbors even before
that.

The circumstances of my adoption into his household--an orphan without
relations or other friends--were not of the sort to serve this
narrative. I was taken in to be raised as a farm-hand, and was no more
expected to be grateful than as if I had been a young steer purchased
to toil in the yoke. No suggestion was ever made that I had incurred
any debt of obligation to the Beeches. In a little community where
everyone worked as a matter of course till there was no more work to
do, and all shared alike the simple food, the tired, heavy sleep,
and the infrequent spells of recreation, no one talked or thought of
benefits conferred or received. My rights in the house and about the
place were neither less nor more than those of Jeff Beech, the farmer's
only son.

In the course of time I came, indeed, to be a more sympathetic unit in
the household, so to speak, than poor Jeff himself. But that was only
because he had been drawn off after strange gods.

At all times--even when nothing else good was said of him--Abner Beech
was spoken of by the people of the district as a "great hand for
reading." His pre-eminence in this matter remained unquestioned to the
end. No other farmer for miles owned half the number of books which he
had on the shelves above his writing-desk. Still less was there anyone
roundabout who could for a moment stand up with him in a discussion
involving book-learning in general. This at first