***




Produced by Al Haines.





                            *IN BEAVER COVE*

                             AND ELSEWHERE


                                   BY

                               MATT CRIM



                                New York
                        CHARLES L. WEBSTER & CO.
                                  1892




                            Copyright, 1892,
                        CHARLES L. WEBSTER & CO.
                        (_All rights reserved._)



                                PRESS OF
                           JENKINS & McCOWAN,
                               NEW YORK.




                                   TO
                           Father and Mother.




                              *CONTENTS.*


In Beaver Cove

S'phiry Ann

An "Onfortunit Creetur"

Bet Crow

Silury

'Zeki'l

Was It an Exceptional Case?

An Old-Time Love Story

How the Quarrel Ended

The Crucial Test

The Story of a Lilac Gown




                    *IN BEAVER COVE and ELSEWHERE.*


                           *IN BEAVER COVE.*


They were having a dance over in Beaver Cove, at the Woods'.  All the
young people of the settlement were there, and many from adjoining
settlements.  The main room of the cabin had been almost cleared of its
meager furniture, and the pine-plank floor creaked under the tread of
shuffling feet, while dust and lamp-smoke made the atmosphere thick and
close.

But little did the dancers care for that.  Bill Eldridge sat by the
hearth, playing his fiddle with tireless energy, while a boy added the
thumping of two straws to the much-tried fiddle-strings.  A party of shy
girls huddled in a corner of the room, and the bashful boys hung about
the door, and talked loudly.

"Hey, there! git yer partners!" Bill cried to them tauntingly from time
to time.

Armindy Hudgins and Elisha Cole were pre-eminently the leaders in the
party.  They danced together again and again; they sat on the bench in
the dooryard; they walked to the spring for a fresh draught of water.
Armindy was the coquette of the settlement.  In beauty, in spirit, and
in daring, no other girl in Beaver Cove could compare with her.  She
could plow all day and dance half the night without losing her peachy
bloom, and it was generally admitted that she could take her choice of
the marriageable young men of the settlement.  But she laughed at all of
them by turns, until her lovers dwindled down to two--Elisha Cole and
Ephraim Hurd.  They were both desperately in earnest, and their rivalry
had almost broken their lifelong friendship.  She favored first one and
then the other, but to-night she showed such decided preference for Cole
that Hurd felt hatred filling his heart.  He did not dance at all, but
hung about the door, or walked moodily up and down the yard, savage with
jealousy. Armindy cast many mocking glances at him, but seemed to feel
no pity for his suffering.

In the middle of the evening, while they were yet fresh, she and Elisha
danced the "hoe-down."  All the others crowded back against the walls,
leaving the middle of the room clear, and she and her partner took their
places. They were the best dancers in the settlement, and Beaver Cove
could boast of some as good as any in all north Georgia.  The music
struck up, and the two young people began slowly to shuffle their feet,
advancing toward each other, then retreating.  They moved at first
without enthusiasm, gravely and coolly.  The music quickened, and their
steps with it.  Now together, now separate, up and down the room, face
to face, advancing, receding, always in that sliding, shuffling step.
The girl's face flushed; her lithe figure, clothed in the most
primitively fashioned blue print gown, swayed and curved in a thousand
graceful movements; her feet, shod in clumsy brogans, moved so swiftly
one could scarcely follow them; her yellow hair slipped from its
fastenings and fell about her neck and shoulders; her bosom heaved and
palpitated.  Panting and breathless, Elisha dropped into a seat, his
defeat greeted with jeering laughter by the crowd, while Armindy kept
the floor.  It was a wild, half-savage dance, and my pen refuses to
describe it. Nowhere, except in the mountains of north Georgia, have I
ever witnessed such a strange performance.

Armindy would not stop until, half-blind and reeling with exhaustion,
she darted toward the door, amid the applause of the crowd.  Elisha Cole
started up to follow her, but Ephraim Hurd reached her side first, and
went out into the yard with her.

"You've nearly killed yourself," he