E-text prepared by Roger Frank
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
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“The moonlight flickered on the blade in his hand as he reeled backward over the bluff” (page 145).
JUDITH OF
THE CUMBERLANDS
BY
ALICE MACGOWAN
AUTHOR OF
“THE WIVING OF LANCE CLEAVERAGE,”
“THE LAST WORD,” “HULDAH,” “RETURN,” ETC.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR
BY
GEORGE WRIGHT
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK
Copyright, 1908
BY
ALICE MACGOWAN
This edition is issued under arrangement with the publishers,
G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York and London
DEDICATION
To my mountain friends, dwellers in lonely cabins, onwinding horseback trails and steep, precarious roads; or in thetiny settlements that nestle in the high-hung inner valleys;lean brown hunters on remote paths in the green shadoweddepths of the free forest, light-stepping, keen-eyed, humorous-lipped,hitting the point as aptly with an instance as with theold squirrel gun they carry; wielders of the axe by many achip pile, where the swinging blade rests readily to answerquery or offer advice; tanned, lithely moving lads followingthe plough, turning over the shoulder a countenance of darkbeauty; grave, shy girls, pail in hand, at the milking-barsin dawn or dusk; young mothers in the doorway, lookingout, babe on hip; big-eyed, bare-footed mountain childrenclinging hand in hand by the roadside, or clustered likestartled little partridges in the shelter of the dooryard;knitters in the sun and grandams by the hearth; tellers andtreasurers all of tales and legends couched in racy old ElizabethanEnglish; I dedicate this—their book and mine.
FOREWORD
I have been so frequently asked how I, awoman, came by my intimate acquaintancewith life in the more remote districts of the southernAppalachians, particularly in the matter ofillicit distilling, that I think it not amiss tohere set down a few words as to my sources ofknowledge.
I have always lived in a small city in the heartof the Cumberlands, and a portion of each yearwas spent in the mountains themselves. Thespeech of Judith and her friends and kin has beenfamiliar to me from childhood; their point ofview, their customs and possessions as well knownto me as my own. Then when I began to write,I was one summer at Roan Mountain, on theNorth Carolina-Tennessee line, probably less thantwo hundred miles from Chattanooga by therailway, and Gen.