r,
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 floor,
one hand drawing close about her the red woollen skirt of her dress. She
seemed shrunken even from her normal small size, and she listened to the
reproachful recital of her political activity with a shrinking dismay on
her soft, roseate face.

"Nuthin' would do Ethelindy," her granny lifted an accusatory voice,
still knitting briskly, though she looked rebukingly over her spectacles
at the cowering girl, "when that thar Union _dee_-tachmint rid into
Tanglefoot Cove like a rat into a trap----"

"Yes," interposed Mrs. Brusie, "through mistakin' it fur Greenbrier
Cove."

"Nuthin' would do Ethelindy but she mus' up an' offer to show the
officer the way out by that thar cave what tunnels through the spur of
the mounting down todes the bluffs, what sca'cely one o' the boys left
in the Cove would know now."

"Else he'd hev been capshured," Ethelinda humbly submitted.

"Yes"--the ruffles of her grandmother's cap were terrible to view as
they wagged at her with the nodding vehemence of her prelection--"an'
_you_ will be capshured now."

The girl visibly winced, and one of the three small boys lying about the
hearth, sharing the warm flags with half a dozen dogs, whimpered aloud
in sympathetic fright. The others preserved a breathless, anxious
silence.

"You-uns mus' be powerful keerful ter say nuthin' 'bout Ethelindy's
hand in that escape of the Fed'ral cavalry"--the old grandfather roused
himself to a politic monition. "Mebbe the raiders won't find it out--an'
the folks in the Cove dun'no' who done it, nuther."

"Yes, bes' be keerful, sure," the gran-dame rejoined. "Fur they puts
wimmin folks in jail out yander in the flat woods;" still glibly
knitting, she jerked her head toward the western world outside the
limits of the great ranges. "Whenst I war a gal I war a