***




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