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                       THE RAID OF THE GUERILLA

                          AND OTHER STORIES

                      BY CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK

AUTHOR OF "THE FAIR MISSISSIPPIAN," "THE PROPHET OF THE GREAT SMOKY
MOUNTAINS," ETC.

    _With Illustrations by_

    W. HERBERT DUNTON AND REMINGTON SCHUYLER

    PHILADELPHIA & LONDON
    J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
    1912

    Copyright, 1911, by J. B. Lippincott Company
    Copyright, 1912, by J. B. Lippincott Company

    Published May, 1912

    Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company
    At the Washington Square Press
    Philadelphia, U.S.A.


[Illustration: HE INSISTED THAT THEY SHOULD SHAKE HANDS AS ON A SOLEMN
COMPACT]




CONTENTS


THE RAID OF THE GUERILLA

WHO CROSSES STORM MOUNTAIN?

THE CRUCIAL MOMENT

UNA OF THE HILL COUNTRY

THE LOST GUIDON

WOLF'S HEAD

HIS UNQUIET GHOST

A CHILHOWEE LILY

THE PHANTOM OF BOGUE HOLAUBA

THE CHRISTMAS MIRACLE




ILLUSTRATIONS


HE INSISTED THAT THEY SHOULD SHAKE HANDS AS ON A SOLEMN COMPACT

HE CAME UP LIKE A WHIRLWIND

THE UNITED WEIGHT AND IMPETUS OF THE ONSET BURST THE FLIMSY DOORS INTO
FRAGMENTS

WITH ONE HAND HOLDING BACK HER DENSE YELLOW HAIR... SHE LOOKED UP AT
HIM




THE RAID OF THE GUERILLA


Judgment day was coming to Tanglefoot Cove--somewhat in advance of the
expectation of the rest of the world. Immediate doom impended. A certain
noted guerilla, commanding a reckless troop, had declared a stern
intention of raiding this secluded nook among the Great Smoky Mountains,
and its denizens could but tremble at the menace.

Few and feeble folk were they. The volunteering spirit rife in the early
days of the Civil War had wrought the first depletion in the number.
Then came, as time wore on, the rigors of the conscription, with an
extension of the limits of age from the very young to the verge of the
venerable, thus robbing, as was said, both the cradle and the grave. Now
only the ancient weaklings and the frail callow remained of the male
population among the women and girls, who seemed mere supernumeraries in
the scheme of creation, rated by the fitness to bear arms.

So feeble a community of non-combatants might hardly compass a warlike
affront calculated to warrant reprisal, but the predominant Union spirit
of East Tennessee was all a-pulse in the Cove, and the deed was no
trifle.

"'T war Ethelindy's deed," her grandfather mumbled, his quivering lips
close to the knob of his stick, on which his palsied, veinous hands
trembled as he sat in his arm-chair on the broad hearth of the main room
in his little log cabin.

Ethelinda Brusie glanced quickly, furtively, at his pondering, wrinkled
old face under the broad brim of his white wool hat, which he still
wore, though indoors and with the night well advanced. Then she fixed
her anxious, excited blue eyes once more on the flare of the fire.

"Lawd! ye jes' now f'und that out, dad?" exclaimed her widowed mother,
busied in her evening task of carding wool on one side of the deep
chimney, built of clay and sticks, and seeming always the imminent prey
of destruction. But there it had stood for a hundred years, dispensing
light and warmth and cheer, itself more inflammable than the great
hickory logs that had summer still among their fibres and dripped sap
odorously as they sluggishly burned.

Ethelinda cast a like agitated glance on the speaker, then her gaze
reverted to the fire. She had the air of being perched up, as if to
escape the clutching waves of calamity, as she sat on a high, inverted
splint basket, her feet not touching the puncheons of the rude