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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Christmas Miracle, by
+Charles Egbert Craddock     (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Christmas Miracle
+       1911
+
+Author: Charles Egbert Craddock     (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
+Release Date: November 19, 2007 [EBook #23553]
+Last Updated: March 8, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHRISTMAS MIRACLE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE CHRISTMAS MIRACLE
+
+By Charles Egbert Craddock
+
+1911
+
+
+He yearned for a sign from the heavens. Could one intimation be
+vouchsafed him, how it would confirm his faltering faith! Jubal Kennedy
+was of the temperament impervious to spiritual subtleties, fain to reach
+conclusions with the line and rule of mathematical demonstration. Thus,
+all unreceptive, he looked through the mountain gap, as through some
+stupendous gateway, on the splendors of autumn; the vast landscape
+glamorous in a transparent amethystine haze; the foliage of the dense
+primeval wilderness in the October richness of red and russet; the
+“hunter's moon,” a full sphere of illuminated pearl, high in the blue
+east while yet the dull vermilion sun swung westering above the massive
+purple heights. He knew how the sap was sinking; that the growths of the
+year had now failed; presently all would be shrouded in snow, but only
+to rise again in the reassurance of vernal quickening, to glow anew in
+the fullness of bloom, to attain eventually the perfection of fruition.
+And still he was deaf to the reiterated analogy of death, and blind to
+the immanent obvious prophecy of resurrection and the life to come. His
+thoughts, as he stood on this jutting crag in Sunrise Gap, were with
+a recent “experience meeting” at which he had sought to canvass his
+spiritual needs. His demand of a sign from the heavens as evidence of
+the existence of the God of revelation, as assurance of the awakening of
+divine grace in the human heart, as actual proof that wistful mortality
+is inherently endowed with immortality, had electrified this symposium.
+Though it was fashionable, so to speak, in this remote cove among the
+Great Smoky Mountains, to be repentant in rhetorical involutions and a
+self-accuser in finespun interpretations of sin, doubt, or more properly
+an eager questioning, a desire to possess the sacred mysteries of
+religion, was unprecedented. Kennedy was a proud man, reticent,
+reserved. Although the old parson, visibly surprised and startled, had
+gently invited his full confidence, Kennedy had hastily swallowed his
+words, as best he might, perceiving that the congregation had wholly
+misinterpreted their true intent and that certain gossips had an unholy
+relish of the sensation they had caused.
+
+Thereafter he indulged his poignant longings for the elucidation of the
+veiled truths only when, as now, he wandered deep in the woods with his
+rifle on his shoulder. He could not have said to-day that he was nearer
+an inspiration, a hope, a “leading,” than heretofore, but as he stood on
+the crag it was with the effect of a dislocation that he was torn from
+the solemn theme by an interruption at a vital crisis.
+
+The faint vibrations of a violin stirred the reverent hush of the
+landscape in the blended light of the setting sun and the “hunter's
+moon.” Presently the musician came into view, advancing slowly through
+the aisles of the red autumn forest. A rapt figure it was, swaying in
+responsive ecstasy with the rhythmic cadence. The head, with its
+long, blowsy yellow hair, was bowed over the dark polished wood of
+the instrument; the eyes were half closed; the right arm, despite the
+eccentric patches on the sleeve of the old brown-jeans coat, moved with
+free, elastic gestures in all the liberties of a practiced bowing. If he
+saw the hunter motionless on the brink of the crag, the fiddler gave
+no intimation. His every faculty was as if enthralled by the swinging
+iteration of the sweet melancholy melody, rendered with a breadth of
+effect, an inspiration, it might almost have seemed, incongruous with
+the infirmities of the crazy old fiddle. He was like a creature under
+the sway of a spell, and apparently drawn by this dulcet lure of the
+enchantment of sound was the odd procession that trailed silently after
+him through these deep mountain fastnesses.
+
+A woman came first, arrayed in a ragged purple skirt and a yellow blouse
+open at the throat, displaying a slender white neck which upheld a face
+of pensive, inert beauty. She clasped in her arms a delicate infant,
+ethereal of aspect with its flaxen hair, transparently pallid
+complexion, and wide blue eyes. It was absolutely quiescent, save
+that now and then it turned feebly in its waxen hands a little striped
+red-and-yellow pomegranate. A sturdy blond toddler trudged behind, in a
+checked blue cotton frock, short enough to disclose cherubic pink feet
+and legs bare to the knee; he carried that treasure of rural juveniles,
+a cornstalk violin. An old hound, his tail suavely wagging, padded along
+the narrow path; and last of all came, with frequent pause to crop the
+wayside herbage, a large cow, brindled red and white.
+
+“The whole fambly!” muttered Kennedy. Then, aloud, “Why don't you uns
+kerry the baby, Basil Bedell, an' give yer wife a rest?”
+
+At the prosaic suggestion the crystal realm of dreams was shattered. The
+bow, with a quavering discordant scrape upon the strings, paused. Then
+Bedell slowly mastered the meaning of the interruption.
+
+“Kerry the baby! Why, Aurely won't let none but herself tech that baby.”
+ He laughed as he tossed the tousled yellow hair from his face, and
+looked over his shoulder to speak to the infant. “It air sech a plumb
+special delightsome peach, it air,--it air!”
+
+The pale face of the child lighted up with a smile of recognition and a
+faint gleam of mirth.
+
+“I jes' kem out ennyhows ter drive up the cow,” Basil added.
+
+“Big job,” sneered Kennedy. “'Pears-like it takes the whole fambly to do
+it.”
+
+Such slothful mismanagement was calculated to affront an energetic
+spirit. Obviously, at this hour the woman should be at home cooking the
+supper.
+
+“I follered along ter listen ter the fiddle,--ef ye hev enny call ter
+know.” Mrs. Bedell replied to his unspoken thought, as if by divination.
+
+But indeed such strictures were not heard for the first time. They were
+in some sort the penalty of the disinterested friendship which Kennedy
+had harbored for Basil since their childhood. He wished that his compeer
+might prosper in such simple wise as his own experience had proved to
+be amply possible. Kennedy's earlier incentive to industry had been his
+intention to marry, but the object of his affections had found him “too
+mortal solemn,” and without a word of warning had married another man in
+a distant cove. The element of treachery in this event had gone far to
+reconcile the jilted lover to his future, bereft of her companionship,
+but the habit of industry thus formed had continued of its own momentum.
+It had resulted in forehanded thrift; he now possessed a comfortable
+holding,--cattle, house, ample land; and he had all the intolerance
+of the ant for the cricket. As Bedell lifted the bow once more, every
+wincing nerve was enlisted in arresting it in mid-air.
+
+“Mighty long tramp fur Bobbie, thar,--why n't ye kerry him!” y
+
+The imperturbable calm still held fast on the musician's face. “Bob,” he
+addressed the toddler, “will you uns let daddy kerry ye like a baby!”
+
+He swooped down as if to lift the child, the violin and bow in his left
+hand. The hardy youngster backed off precipitately.
+
+“Don't ye _dare_ ter do it!” he virulently admonished his parent, a
+resentful light in his blue eyes. Then, as Bedell sang a stave in a full
+rich voice, “Bye-oh, Baby!” Bob vociferated anew, “Don't you _begin_ ter
+dare do it!” every inch a man though a little one.
+
+“That's the kind of a fambly I hev got,” Basil commented easily. “Wife
+an' boy an' baby all walk over me,--plumb stomp on me! Jes' enough lef
+of me ter play the fiddle a leetle once in a while.”
+
+“Mighty nigh all the while, I be afeared,” Kennedy corrected the phrase.
+“How did yer corn crap turn out!” he asked, as he too fell into line and
+the procession moved on once more along the narrow path.
+
+“Well enough,” said Basil; “we uns hev got a sufficiency.” Then, as if
+afraid of seeming boastful he qualified, “Ye know I hain't got but
+one muel ter feed, an' the cow thar. My sheep gits thar pastur' on
+the volunteer grass 'mongst the rocks, an' I hev jes' got a few head
+ennyhows.”
+
+“But _why_ hain't ye got more, Basil! Why n't ye work more and quit
+wastin' yer time on that old fool fiddle!”
+
+The limits of patience were reached. The musician fired up. “'Kase,”
+ he retorted, “I make enough. I hev got grace enough ter be thankful fur
+sech ez be vouchsafed ter me. _I_ ain't wantin' no meracle.”
+
+Kennedy flushed, following in silence while the musician annotated his
+triumph by a series of gay little harmonics, and young Hopeful, trudging
+in the rear, executed a soundless fantasia on the cornstalk fiddle with
+great brilliancy of technique.
+
+“You uns air talkin' 'bout whut I said at the meetin' las' month,”
+ Kennedy observed at length.
+
+“An' so be all the mounting,” Aurelia interpolated with a sudden fierce
+joy of reproof.
+
+Kennedy winced visibly.
+
+“The folks all 'low ez ye be no better than an onbeliever.” Aurelia was
+bent on driving the blade home. “The idee of axin' fur a meracle at this
+late day,--so ez _ye_ kin be satisfied in yer mind ez ye hev got grace!
+Providence, though merciful, air _obleeged_, ter know ez sech air plumb
+scandalous an' redic'lous.”
+
+“Why, Aurely, hesh up,” exclaimed her husband, startled from his wonted
+leniency. “I hev never hearn ye talk in sech a key,--yer voice sounds
+plumb out o' tune. I be plumb sorry, Jube, ez I spoke ter you uns 'bout
+a meracle at all. But I frar consider'ble nettled by yer words, ye
+see,--'kase I know I be a powerful, lazy, shif'less cuss----”
+
+“Ye know a lie, then,” his helpmate interrupted promptly.
+
+“Why, Aurely, hesh up,--ye--ye--_woman_, ye!” he concluded injuriously.
+Then resuming his remarks to Kennedy, “I know I _do_ fool away a deal of
+my time with the fiddle----”
+
+“The sound of it is like bread ter me,--
+
+“I couldn't live without it,” interposed the unconquered Aurelia.
+“Sometimes it minds me o' the singin' o' runnin' water in a lonesome
+place. Then agin it minds me o' seein' sunshine in a dream. An'
+sometimes it be sweet an' high an' fur off, like a voice from the sky,
+tellin' what no mortial ever knowed before,--an' _then_ it minds me o'
+the tune them angels sung ter the shepherds abidin' in the fields. I
+_couldn't_ live without it.”
+
+“Woman, hold yer jaw!” Basil proclaimed comprehensively. Then, renewing
+his explanation to Kennedy, “I kin see that I don't purvide fur my
+fambly ez I ought ter do, through hatin' work and lovin' to play the
+fiddle.”
+
+“I ain't goin' ter hear my home an' hearth reviled.” Aurelia laid an
+imperative hand on her husband's arm. “Ye know ye couldn 't make more
+out'n sech ground,--though I ain't faultin' our land, neither. We uns
+hev enough an' ter spare, all we need an' more than we deserve. We don't
+need ter ax a meracle from the skies ter stay our souls on faith, nor a
+sign ter prove our grace.”
+
+“Now, _now, stop_, Aurely!--I declar', Jube I dunno what made me lay my
+tongue ter sech a word ez that thar miser'ble benighted meracle! I be
+powerful sorry I hurt yer feelin's, Jube; folks seekin' salvation git
+mightily mis-put sometimes, an'----”
+
+“_I_ don't want ter hear none o' yer views on religion,” Kennedy
+interrupted gruffly. An apology often augments the sense of injury. In
+this instance it also annulled the provocation, for his own admission
+put Bedell hopelessly in the wrong. “Ez a friend I war argufyin' with ye
+agin' yer waste o' time with that old fool fiddle. Ye hev got wife an'
+children, an' yit not so well off in this world's gear ez me, a single
+man. I misdoubts ef ye hev hunted a day since the craps war laid by, or
+hev got a pound o' jerked venison stored up fer winter. But this air
+yer home,”--he pointed upward at a little clearing beginning, as they
+approached, to be visible amidst the forest,--“an' ef ye air satisfied
+with sech ez it be, that comes from laziness stiddier a contented
+sperit.”
+
+With this caustic saying he suddenly left them, the procession standing
+silently staring after him as he took his way through the woods in the
+dusky red shadows of the autumnal gloaming.
+
+Aurelia's vaunted home was indeed a poor place,--not even the rude
+though substantial log-cabin common to the region. It was a flimsy
+shanty of boards, and except for its rickety porch was more like a box
+than a house. It had its perch on a jutting eminence, where it seemed
+the familiar of the skies, so did the clouds and winds circle about it.
+Through the great gateway of Sunrise Gap it commanded a landscape of a
+scope that might typify a world, in its multitude of mountain ranges, in
+the intricacies of its intervening valleys, in the glittering coils
+of its water-courses. Basil would sometimes sink into deep silences,
+overpowered by the majesty of nature in this place. After a long hiatus
+the bow would tremble and falter on the strings as if overawed for a
+time; presently the theme would strengthen, expand, resound with large
+meaning, and then he would send forth melodies that he had never before
+played or heard, his own dream, the reflection of that mighty mood of
+nature in the limpid pool of his receptive mind.
+
+Around were rocks, crags, chasms,--the fields which nourished the family
+lay well from the verge, within the purlieus of the limited mountain
+plateau. He had sought to persuade himself that it was to save all the
+arable land for tillage that he had placed his house and door-yard here,
+but both he and Aurelia were secretly aware of the subterfuge; he would
+fain be always within the glamour of the prospect through Sunrise Gap!
+
+Their interlocutor had truly deemed that the woman should have been
+earlier at home cooking the supper. Dusk had deepened to darkness long
+before the meal smoked upon the board. The spinning-wheel had begun to
+whir for her evening stint when other hill-folks had betaken themselves
+to bed. Basil puffed his pipe before the fire; the flicker and
+flare pervaded every nook of the bright little house. Strings of
+red-pepper-pods flaunted in festoons from the beams; the baby slumbered
+under a gay quilt in his rude cradle, never far from his mother's hand,
+but the bluff little boy was still up and about, although his aspect,
+round and burly, in a scanty nightgown, gave token of recognition of the
+fact that bed was his appropriate place. His shrill plaintive voice rose
+ever and anon wakefully.
+
+“I wanter hear a bear tale,--I wanter hear a bear tale.”
+
+Thus Basil must needs knock the ashes from his pipe the better to devote
+himself to the narration,--a prince of raconteurs, to judge by the
+spell-bound interest of the youngster who stood at his knee and hung
+on his words. Even Aurelia checked the whir of her wheel to listen
+smilingly. She broke out laughing in appreciative pleasure when Basil
+took up the violin to show how a jovial old bear, who intruded into this
+very house one day when all the family were away at the church in the
+cove, and who mistook the instrument for a banjo, addressed himself to
+picking out this tune, singing the while a quaint and ursine lay. Basil
+embellished the imitation with a masterly effect of realistic growls.
+
+“Ef ye keep goin' at that gait, Basil,” Aurelia admonished him,
+“daylight will ketch us all wide awake around the fire,--no wonder the
+child won't go to bed.” She seemed suddenly impressed with the pervasive
+cheer. “What a fool that man, Jube Kennedy, must be! How _could_
+ennybody hev a sweeter, darlinger home than we uns hev got hyar in
+Sunrise Gap!”
+
+On the languorous autumn a fierce winter ensued. The cold came early.
+The deciduous growths of the forests were leafless ere November waned,
+rifled by the riotous marauding winds. December set in with the gusty
+snow flying fast. Drear were the gray skies; ghastly the sheeted ranges.
+Drifts piled high in bleak ravines, and the grim gneissoid crags were
+begirt with gigantic icicles. But about the little house in Sunrise
+Gap that kept so warm a heart, the holly trees showed their glad green
+leaves and the red berries glowed with a mystic significance.
+
+As the weeks wore on, the place was often in Kennedy's mind, although
+he had not seen it since that autumn afternoon when he had bestirred
+himself to rebuke its owner concerning the inadequacies of the domestic
+provision. His admonition had been kindly meant and had not deserved
+the retort, the flippant ridicule of his spiritual yearnings. Though he
+still winced from the recollection, he was sorry that he had resisted
+the importunacy of Basil's apology. He realized that Aurelia had
+persisted to the limit of her power in the embitterment of the
+controversy, but even Aurelia he was disposed to forgive as time passed
+on. When Christinas Day dawned, the vague sentiment began to assume the
+definiteness of a purpose, and noontide found him on his way to Sunrise
+Gap.
+
+There was now no path through the woods; the snow lay deep over all,
+unbroken save at long intervals when queer footprints gave token of the
+stirring abroad of the sylvan denizens, and he felt an idle interest in
+distinguishing the steps of wolf and fox, of opossum and weasel. In the
+intricacies of the forest aisles, amid laden boughs of pine and fir,
+there was a suggestion of darkness, but all the sky held not enough
+light to cast the shadow of a bole on the white blank spaces of the
+snow-covered ground. A vague blue haze clothed the air; yet as he drew
+near the mountain brink, all was distinct in the vast landscape, the
+massive ranges and alternating valleys in infinite repetition.
+
+He wondered when near the house that he had not heard the familiar
+barking of the old hound; then he remembered that the sound of his
+horse's hoofs was muffled by the snow. He was glad to be unheralded.
+He would like to surprise Aurelia into geniality before her vicarious
+rancor for Basil's sake should be roused anew. As he emerged from
+the thick growths of the holly, with the icy scintillations of its
+clustering green leaves and red berries, he drew rein so suddenly that
+the horse was thrown back on his haunches. The rider sat as if petrified
+in the presence of an awful disaster.
+
+The house was gone! Even the site had vanished! Kennedy stared
+bewildered. Slowly the realization of what had chanced here began to
+creep through his brain. Evidently there had been a gigantic landslide.
+The cliff-like projection was broken sheer off,--hurled into the depths
+of the valley. Some action of subterranean waters, throughout ages,
+doubtless, had been undermining the great crags till the rocky crust
+of the earth had collapsed. He could see even now how the freeze had
+fractured outcropping ledges where the ice had gathered in the fissures.
+A deep abyss that he remembered as being at a considerable distance
+from the mountain's brink, once spanned by a foot-bridge, now showed
+the remnant of its jagged, shattered walls at the extreme verge of the
+precipice.
+
+A cold chill of horror benumbed his senses. Basil, the wife, the
+children,--where were they? A terrible death, surely, to be torn from
+the warm securities of the hearth-stone, without a moment's warning,
+and hurled into the midst of this frantic turmoil of nature, down to
+the depths of the gap,--a thousand feet below! And at what time had this
+dread fate befallen his friend? He remembered that at the cross-roads'
+store, when he had paused on his way to warm himself that morning, some
+gossip was detailing the phenomenon of unseasonable thunder during the
+previous night, while others protested that it must have been only
+the clamors of “Christmas guns” firing all along the country-side. “A
+turrible clap, it was,” the raconteur had persisted. “Sounded ez ef all
+creation hed split apart.” Perhaps, therefore, the catastrophe might be
+recent. Kennedy could scarcely command his muscles as he dismounted and
+made his way slowly and cautiously to the verge.
+
+Any deviation from the accustomed routine of nature has an unnerving
+effect, unparalleled by disaster in other sort; no individual danger or
+doom, the aspect of death by drowning, or gunshot, or disease, can so
+abash the reason and stultify normal expectation. Kennedy was scarcely
+conscious that he saw the vast disorder of the landslide, scattered from
+the precipice on the mountain's brink to the depths of the Gap--inverted
+roots of great pines thrust out in mid-air, foundations of crags riven
+asunder and hurled in monstrous fragments along the steep slant, unknown
+streams newly liberated from the caverns of the range and cascading from
+the crevices of the rocks. In effect he could not believe his own eyes.
+His mind realized the perception of his senses only when his heart
+suddenly plunged with a wild hope,--he had discerned amongst the turmoil
+a shape of line and rule, the little box-like hut! Caught as it was in
+the boughs of a cluster of pines and firs, uprooted and thrust out at an
+incline a little less than vertical, the inmates might have been spared
+such shock of the fall as would otherwise have proved fatal. Had the
+house been one of the substantial log-cabins of the region its timbers
+must have been torn one from another, the daubing and chinking scattered
+as mere atoms. But the more flimsy character of the little dwelling
+had thus far served to save it,--the interdependent “framing” of its
+structure held fast; the upright studding and boards, nailed stoutly on,
+rendered it indeed the box that it looked. It was, so to speak, built in
+one piece, and no part was subjected to greater strain than another.
+But should the earth cave anew, should the tough fibres of one of those
+gigantic roots tear out from the loosened friable soil, should the
+elastic supporting branches barely sway in some errant gust of wind, the
+little box would fall hundreds of feet, cracked like a nut, shattering
+against the rocks of the levels below.
+
+He wondered if the inmates yet lived,--he pitied them still more if
+they only existed to realize their peril, to await in an anguish of
+fear their ultimate doom. Perhaps--he felt he was but trifling with
+despair--some rescue might be devised.
+
+Such a weird cry he set up on the brink of the mountain!--full of
+horror, grief, and that poignant hope. The echoes of the Gap seemed
+reluctant to repeat the tones, dull, slow, muffled in snow. But a sturdy
+halloo responded from the window, uppermost now, for the house lay
+on its side amongst the boughs. Kennedy thought he saw the pallid
+simulacrum of a face.
+
+“This be Jube Kennedy,” he cried, reassuringly. “I be goin' ter fetch
+help,--men, ropes, and a windlass.”
+
+“Make haste then,--we uns be nigh friz.”
+
+“Ye air in no danger of fire, then?” asked the practical man.
+
+“We hev hed none,--before we war flunged off'n the bluff we hed
+squinched the fire ter pledjure Bob, ez he war afeard Santy Claus would
+scorch his feet comm' down the chimbley,--powerful lucky fur we uns; the
+fire would hev burnt the house bodaciously.”
+
+Kennedy hardly stayed to hear. He was off in a moment, galloping at
+frantic speed along the snowy trail scarcely traceable in the sad light
+of the gray day; taking short cuts through the densities of the laurel;
+torn by jagged rocks and tangles of thorny growths and broken branches
+of great trees; plunging now and again into deep drifts above concealed
+icy chasms, and rescuing with inexpressible difficulty the floundering,
+struggling horse; reaching again the open sheeted roadway, bruised,
+bleeding, exhausted, yet furiously plunging forward, rousing the
+sparsely settled country-side with imperative insistence for help in
+this matter of life or death!
+
+Death, indeed, only,--for the enterprise was pronounced impossible by
+those more experienced than Kennedy. Among the men now on the bluff were
+several who had been employed in the silver mines of this region, and
+they demonstrated conclusively that a rope could not be worked clear of
+the obstructions of the face of the rugged and shattered cliffs; that
+a human being, drawn from the cabin, strapped in a chair, must needs be
+torn from it and flung into the abyss below, or beaten to a frightful
+death against the jagged rocks in the transit.
+
+“But not ef the chair war ter be steadied by a guy-rope from--say--from
+that thar old pine tree over thar,” Kennedy insisted, indicating the
+long bole of a partially uprooted and inverted tree on the steeps. “The
+chair would swing cl'ar of the bluff then.”
+
+“But, Jube, it is onpossible ter git a guy-rope over ter that
+tree,--more than a man's life is wuth ter try it.”
+
+A moment ensued of absolute silence,--space, however, for a hard-fought
+battle.
+
+The aspect of that mad world below, with every condition of creation
+reversed; a mistake in the adjustment of the winch and gear by the
+excited, reluctant, disapproving men; an overstrain on the fibres of the
+long-used rope; a slip on the treacherous ice; the dizzy whirl of the
+senses that even a glance downward at those drear depths set astir in
+the brain,--all were canvassed within his mental processes, all were
+duly realized in their entirety ere he said with a spare dull voice and
+dry lips,--
+
+“Fix ter let me down ter that thar leanin' pine, boys,--I'll kerry a
+guy-rope over thar.”
+
+At one side the crag beetled, and although it was impossible thence to
+reach the cabin with a rope it would swing clear of obstructions here,
+and might bring the rescuer within touch of the pine, where could be
+fastened the guy-rope; the other end would be affixed to the chair which
+could be lowered to the cabin only from the rugged face of the cliff.
+Kennedy harbored no self-deception; he more than doubted the outcome of
+the enterprise. He quaked and turned pale with dread as with the great
+rope knotted about his arm-pits and around his waist he was swung over
+the brink at the point where the crag jutted forth,--lower and lower
+still; now nearing the slanting inverted pine, caught amidst the débris
+of earth and rock; now failing to reach its boughs; once more swinging
+back to a great distance, so did the length of the rope increase the
+scope of the pendulum; now nearing the pine again, and at last fairly
+lodged on the icy bole, knotting and coiling about it the end of the
+guy-rope, on which he had come and on which he must needs return.
+
+It seemed, through the inexpert handling of the little group, a long
+time before the stout arm-chair was secured to the cables, slowly
+lowered, and landed at last on the outside of the hut. Many an anxious
+glance was cast at the slate-gray sky. An inopportune flurry of snow, a
+flaw of wind:--and even now all would be lost. Dusk too impended, and
+as the rope began to coil on the windlass at the signal to hoist every
+eye was strained to discern the identity of the first voyagers in this
+aerial journey,--the two children, securely lashed to the chair. This
+was well,--all felt that both parents might best wait, might risk
+the added delay. The chair came swinging easily, swiftly, along the
+gradations of the rise, the guy-rope holding it well from the chances
+of contact with the jagged projections of the face of the cliff, and the
+first shout of triumph rang sonorously from the summit.
+
+When next the chair rested on the cabin beside the window, a thrill of
+anxiety and anger went through Kennedy's heart to note, from his perch
+on the leaning pine, a struggle between husband and wife as to who
+should go first. Each was eager to take the many risks incident to the
+long wait in this precarious lodgment. The man was the stronger. Aurelia
+was forced into the chair, tied fast, pushed off, waving' her hand to
+her husband, shedding floods of tears, looking at him for the last time,
+as she fancied, and calling out dismally, “Far'well, Basil, far'-well.”
+
+Even this lugubrious demonstration could not damp the spirits of the men
+working like mad at the windlass. They were jovial enough for bursts
+of laughter when it became apparent that Basil had utilized the ensuing
+interval to tie together, in preparation for the ascent with himself,
+the two objects which he next most treasured, his violin and his old
+hound. The trusty chair bore all aloft, and Basil was received with
+welcoming acclamations.
+
+Before the rope was wound anew and for the last time, the aspect of
+the group on the cliff had changed. It had grown eerie, indistinct. The
+pines and firs showed no longer their sempervirent green, but were black
+amid the white tufted lines on their branches, that still served to
+accentuate their symmetry. The vale had disappeared in a sinister abyss
+of gloom, though Kennedy would not look down at its menace, but upward,
+always upward. Thus he saw, like some radiant and splendid star, the
+first torch whitely aglow on the brink of the precipice. It opened long
+avenues of light adown the snowy landscape,--soft blue shadows trailed
+after it, like half-descried draperies of elusive hovering beings. Soon
+the torch was duplicated; another and then another began to glow. Now
+several drew together, and like a constellation glimmered crownlike
+on the brow of the night, as he felt the rope stir with the signal to
+hoist.
+
+Upward, always upward, his eyes on that radiant stellular coronal, as
+it shone white and splendid in the snowy night. And now it had lost its
+mystic glamour,--disintegrated by gradual approach he could see the long
+handles of the pine-knots; the red verges of the flame; the blue and
+yellow tones of the focus; the trailing wreaths of dun-tinted smoke that
+rose from them. Then became visible the faces of the men who held them,
+all crowding eagerly to the verge. But it was in a solemn silence
+that he was received; a drear cold darkness, every torch being stuick
+downward into the snow; a frantic haste in unharnessing him from the
+ropes, for he was almost frozen. He was hardly apt enough to interpret
+this as an emotion too deep for words, but now and again, as he was
+disentangled, he felt about his shoulders a furtive hug, and more than
+one pair of the ministering hands must needs pause to wring his own
+hands hard. They practically carried him to a fire that had been built
+in a sheltered place in one of those grottoes of the region, locally
+called “Rock-houses.” Its cavernous portal gave upon a dark interior,
+and not until they had turned a corner in a tunnel-like passage was
+revealed an arched space in a rayonnant suffusion of light, the fire
+itself obscured by the figures about it. His eyes were caught first by
+the aspect of a youthful mother with a golden-haired babe on her breast;
+close by showed the head and horns of a cow; the mule was mercifully
+sheltered too, and stood near, munching his fodder; a cluster of
+sheep pressed after the steps of half a dozen men, that somehow in the
+clare-obscure reminded him of the shepherds of old summoned by good
+tidings of great joy.
+
+A sudden figure started up with streaming white hair and patriarchal
+beard.
+
+“Will ye deny ez ye hev hed a sign from the heavens, Jubal Kennedy?” the
+old circuit-rider straitly demanded. “How could ye hev strengthened yer
+heart fur sech a deed onless the grace o' God prevailed mightily
+within ye? Inasmuch as ye hev done it unto one o' the least o' these my
+brethern, ye hev done it unto me.”
+
+“That ain't the _kind_ o' sign, parson,” Kennedy faltered. “I be lookin'
+fur a meracle in the yearth or in the air, that I kin view or hear.”
+
+“The kingdom o' Christ is a spiritual kingdom,” said the parson
+solemnly. “The kingdom o' Christ is a _spiritual_ kingdom, an' great are
+the wonders that are wrought therein.”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Christmas Miracle, by
+Charles Egbert Craddock     (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Christmas Miracle, by 
+Charles Egbert Craddock     (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Christmas Miracle
+       1911
+
+Author: Charles Egbert Craddock     (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
+Release Date: November 19, 2007 [EBook #23553]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHRISTMAS MIRACLE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE CHRISTMAS MIRACLE
+
+By Charles Egbert Craddock
+
+1911
+
+
+He yearned for a sign from the heavens. Could one intimation be
+vouchsafed him, how it would confirm his faltering faith! Jubal Kennedy
+was of the temperament impervious to spiritual subtleties, fain to reach
+conclusions with the line and rule of mathematical demonstration. Thus,
+all unreceptive, he looked through the mountain gap, as through some
+stupendous gateway, on the splendors of autumn; the vast landscape
+glamorous in a transparent amethystine haze; the foliage of the dense
+primeval wilderness in the October richness of red and russet; the
+"hunter's moon," a full sphere of illuminated pearl, high in the blue
+east while yet the dull vermilion sun swung westering above the massive
+purple heights. He knew how the sap was sinking; that the growths of the
+year had now failed; presently all would be shrouded in snow, but only
+to rise again in the reassurance of vernal quickening, to glow anew in
+the fullness of bloom, to attain eventually the perfection of fruition.
+And still he was deaf to the reiterated analogy of death, and blind to
+the immanent obvious prophecy of resurrection and the life to come. His
+thoughts, as he stood on this jutting crag in Sunrise Gap, were with
+a recent "experience meeting" at which he had sought to canvass his
+spiritual needs. His demand of a sign from the heavens as evidence of
+the existence of the God of revelation, as assurance of the awakening of
+divine grace in the human heart, as actual proof that wistful mortality
+is inherently endowed with immortality, had electrified this symposium.
+Though it was fashionable, so to speak, in this remote cove among the
+Great Smoky Mountains, to be repentant in rhetorical involutions and a
+self-accuser in finespun interpretations of sin, doubt, or more properly
+an eager questioning, a desire to possess the sacred mysteries of
+religion, was unprecedented. Kennedy was a proud man, reticent,
+reserved. Although the old parson, visibly surprised and startled, had
+gently invited his full confidence, Kennedy had hastily swallowed his
+words, as best he might, perceiving that the congregation had wholly
+misinterpreted their true intent and that certain gossips had an unholy
+relish of the sensation they had caused.
+
+Thereafter he indulged his poignant longings for the elucidation of the
+veiled truths only when, as now, he wandered deep in the woods with his
+rifle on his shoulder. He could not have said to-day that he was nearer
+an inspiration, a hope, a "leading," than heretofore, but as he stood on
+the crag it was with the effect of a dislocation that he was torn from
+the solemn theme by an interruption at a vital crisis.
+
+The faint vibrations of a violin stirred the reverent hush of the
+landscape in the blended light of the setting sun and the "hunter's
+moon." Presently the musician came into view, advancing slowly through
+the aisles of the red autumn forest. A rapt figure it was, swaying in
+responsive ecstasy with the rhythmic cadence. The head, with its
+long, blowsy yellow hair, was bowed over the dark polished wood of
+the instrument; the eyes were half closed; the right arm, despite the
+eccentric patches on the sleeve of the old brown-jeans coat, moved with
+free, elastic gestures in all the liberties of a practiced bowing. If he
+saw the hunter motionless on the brink of the crag, the fiddler gave
+no intimation. His every faculty was as if enthralled by the swinging
+iteration of the sweet melancholy melody, rendered with a breadth of
+effect, an inspiration, it might almost have seemed, incongruous with
+the infirmities of the crazy old fiddle. He was like a creature under
+the sway of a spell, and apparently drawn by this dulcet lure of the
+enchantment of sound was the odd procession that trailed silently after
+him through these deep mountain fastnesses.
+
+A woman came first, arrayed in a ragged purple skirt and a yellow blouse
+open at the throat, displaying a slender white neck which upheld a face
+of pensive, inert beauty. She clasped in her arms a delicate infant,
+ethereal of aspect with its flaxen hair, transparently pallid
+complexion, and wide blue eyes. It was absolutely quiescent, save
+that now and then it turned feebly in its waxen hands a little striped
+red-and-yellow pomegranate. A sturdy blond toddler trudged behind, in a
+checked blue cotton frock, short enough to disclose cherubic pink feet
+and legs bare to the knee; he carried that treasure of rural juveniles,
+a cornstalk violin. An old hound, his tail suavely wagging, padded along
+the narrow path; and last of all came, with frequent pause to crop the
+wayside herbage, a large cow, brindled red and white.
+
+"The whole fambly!" muttered Kennedy. Then, aloud, "Why don't you uns
+kerry the baby, Basil Bedell, an' give yer wife a rest?"
+
+At the prosaic suggestion the crystal realm of dreams was shattered. The
+bow, with a quavering discordant scrape upon the strings, paused. Then
+Bedell slowly mastered the meaning of the interruption.
+
+"Kerry the baby! Why, Aurely won't let none but herself tech that baby."
+He laughed as he tossed the tousled yellow hair from his face, and
+looked over his shoulder to speak to the infant. "It air sech a plumb
+special delightsome peach, it air,--it air!"
+
+The pale face of the child lighted up with a smile of recognition and a
+faint gleam of mirth.
+
+"I jes' kem out ennyhows ter drive up the cow," Basil added.
+
+"Big job," sneered Kennedy. "'Pears-like it takes the whole fambly to do
+it."
+
+Such slothful mismanagement was calculated to affront an energetic
+spirit. Obviously, at this hour the woman should be at home cooking the
+supper.
+
+"I follered along ter listen ter the fiddle,--ef ye hev enny call ter
+know." Mrs. Bedell replied to his unspoken thought, as if by divination.
+
+But indeed such strictures were not heard for the first time. They were
+in some sort the penalty of the disinterested friendship which Kennedy
+had harbored for Basil since their childhood. He wished that his compeer
+might prosper in such simple wise as his own experience had proved to
+be amply possible. Kennedy's earlier incentive to industry had been his
+intention to marry, but the object of his affections had found him "too
+mortal solemn," and without a word of warning had married another man in
+a distant cove. The element of treachery in this event had gone far to
+reconcile the jilted lover to his future, bereft of her companionship,
+but the habit of industry thus formed had continued of its own momentum.
+It had resulted in forehanded thrift; he now possessed a comfortable
+holding,--cattle, house, ample land; and he had all the intolerance
+of the ant for the cricket. As Bedell lifted the bow once more, every
+wincing nerve was enlisted in arresting it in mid-air.
+
+"Mighty long tramp fur Bobbie, thar,--why n't ye kerry him!" y
+
+The imperturbable calm still held fast on the musician's face. "Bob," he
+addressed the toddler, "will you uns let daddy kerry ye like a baby!"
+
+He swooped down as if to lift the child, the violin and bow in his left
+hand. The hardy youngster backed off precipitately.
+
+"Don't ye _dare_ ter do it!" he virulently admonished his parent, a
+resentful light in his blue eyes. Then, as Bedell sang a stave in a full
+rich voice, "Bye-oh, Baby!" Bob vociferated anew, "Don't you _begin_ ter
+dare do it!" every inch a man though a little one.
+
+"That's the kind of a fambly I hev got," Basil commented easily. "Wife
+an' boy an' baby all walk over me,--plumb stomp on me! Jes' enough lef
+of me ter play the fiddle a leetle once in a while."
+
+"Mighty nigh all the while, I be afeared," Kennedy corrected the phrase.
+"How did yer corn crap turn out!" he asked, as he too fell into line and
+the procession moved on once more along the narrow path.
+
+"Well enough," said Basil; "we uns hev got a sufficiency." Then, as if
+afraid of seeming boastful he qualified, "Ye know I hain't got but
+one muel ter feed, an' the cow thar. My sheep gits thar pastur' on
+the volunteer grass 'mongst the rocks, an' I hev jes' got a few head
+ennyhows."
+
+"But _why_ hain't ye got more, Basil! Why n't ye work more and quit
+wastin' yer time on that old fool fiddle!"
+
+The limits of patience were reached. The musician fired up. "'Kase,"
+he retorted, "I make enough. I hev got grace enough ter be thankful fur
+sech ez be vouchsafed ter me. _I_ ain't wantin' no meracle."
+
+Kennedy flushed, following in silence while the musician annotated his
+triumph by a series of gay little harmonics, and young Hopeful, trudging
+in the rear, executed a soundless fantasia on the cornstalk fiddle with
+great brilliancy of technique.
+
+"You uns air talkin' 'bout whut I said at the meetin' las' month,"
+Kennedy observed at length.
+
+"An' so be all the mounting," Aurelia interpolated with a sudden fierce
+joy of reproof.
+
+Kennedy winced visibly.
+
+"The folks all 'low ez ye be no better than an onbeliever." Aurelia was
+bent on driving the blade home. "The idee of axin' fur a meracle at this
+late day,--so ez _ye_ kin be satisfied in yer mind ez ye hev got grace!
+Providence, though merciful, air _obleeged_, ter know ez sech air plumb
+scandalous an' redic'lous."
+
+"Why, Aurely, hesh up," exclaimed her husband, startled from his wonted
+leniency. "I hev never hearn ye talk in sech a key,--yer voice sounds
+plumb out o' tune. I be plumb sorry, Jube, ez I spoke ter you uns 'bout
+a meracle at all. But I frar consider'ble nettled by yer words, ye
+see,--'kase I know I be a powerful, lazy, shif'less cuss----"
+
+"Ye know a lie, then," his helpmate interrupted promptly.
+
+"Why, Aurely, hesh up,--ye--ye--_woman_, ye!" he concluded injuriously.
+Then resuming his remarks to Kennedy, "I know I _do_ fool away a deal of
+my time with the fiddle----"
+
+"The sound of it is like bread ter me,--
+
+"I couldn't live without it," interposed the unconquered Aurelia.
+"Sometimes it minds me o' the singin' o' runnin' water in a lonesome
+place. Then agin it minds me o' seein' sunshine in a dream. An'
+sometimes it be sweet an' high an' fur off, like a voice from the sky,
+tellin' what no mortial ever knowed before,--an' _then_ it minds me o'
+the tune them angels sung ter the shepherds abidin' in the fields. I
+_couldn't_ live without it."
+
+"Woman, hold yer jaw!" Basil proclaimed comprehensively. Then, renewing
+his explanation to Kennedy, "I kin see that I don't purvide fur my
+fambly ez I ought ter do, through hatin' work and lovin' to play the
+fiddle."
+
+"I ain't goin' ter hear my home an' hearth reviled." Aurelia laid an
+imperative hand on her husband's arm. "Ye know ye couldn 't make more
+out'n sech ground,--though I ain't faultin' our land, neither. We uns
+hev enough an' ter spare, all we need an' more than we deserve. We don't
+need ter ax a meracle from the skies ter stay our souls on faith, nor a
+sign ter prove our grace."
+
+"Now, _now, stop_, Aurely!--I declar', Jube I dunno what made me lay my
+tongue ter sech a word ez that thar miser'ble benighted meracle! I be
+powerful sorry I hurt yer feelin's, Jube; folks seekin' salvation git
+mightily mis-put sometimes, an'----"
+
+"_I_ don't want ter hear none o' yer views on religion," Kennedy
+interrupted gruffly. An apology often augments the sense of injury. In
+this instance it also annulled the provocation, for his own admission
+put Bedell hopelessly in the wrong. "Ez a friend I war argufyin' with ye
+agin' yer waste o' time with that old fool fiddle. Ye hev got wife an'
+children, an' yit not so well off in this world's gear ez me, a single
+man. I misdoubts ef ye hev hunted a day since the craps war laid by, or
+hev got a pound o' jerked venison stored up fer winter. But this air
+yer home,"--he pointed upward at a little clearing beginning, as they
+approached, to be visible amidst the forest,--"an' ef ye air satisfied
+with sech ez it be, that comes from laziness stiddier a contented
+sperit."
+
+With this caustic saying he suddenly left them, the procession standing
+silently staring after him as he took his way through the woods in the
+dusky red shadows of the autumnal gloaming.
+
+Aurelia's vaunted home was indeed a poor place,--not even the rude
+though substantial log-cabin common to the region. It was a flimsy
+shanty of boards, and except for its rickety porch was more like a box
+than a house. It had its perch on a jutting eminence, where it seemed
+the familiar of the skies, so did the clouds and winds circle about it.
+Through the great gateway of Sunrise Gap it commanded a landscape of a
+scope that might typify a world, in its multitude of mountain ranges, in
+the intricacies of its intervening valleys, in the glittering coils
+of its water-courses. Basil would sometimes sink into deep silences,
+overpowered by the majesty of nature in this place. After a long hiatus
+the bow would tremble and falter on the strings as if overawed for a
+time; presently the theme would strengthen, expand, resound with large
+meaning, and then he would send forth melodies that he had never before
+played or heard, his own dream, the reflection of that mighty mood of
+nature in the limpid pool of his receptive mind.
+
+Around were rocks, crags, chasms,--the fields which nourished the family
+lay well from the verge, within the purlieus of the limited mountain
+plateau. He had sought to persuade himself that it was to save all the
+arable land for tillage that he had placed his house and door-yard here,
+but both he and Aurelia were secretly aware of the subterfuge; he would
+fain be always within the glamour of the prospect through Sunrise Gap!
+
+Their interlocutor had truly deemed that the woman should have been
+earlier at home cooking the supper. Dusk had deepened to darkness long
+before the meal smoked upon the board. The spinning-wheel had begun to
+whir for her evening stint when other hill-folks had betaken themselves
+to bed. Basil puffed his pipe before the fire; the flicker and
+flare pervaded every nook of the bright little house. Strings of
+red-pepper-pods flaunted in festoons from the beams; the baby slumbered
+under a gay quilt in his rude cradle, never far from his mother's hand,
+but the bluff little boy was still up and about, although his aspect,
+round and burly, in a scanty nightgown, gave token of recognition of the
+fact that bed was his appropriate place. His shrill plaintive voice rose
+ever and anon wakefully.
+
+"I wanter hear a bear tale,--I wanter hear a bear tale."
+
+Thus Basil must needs knock the ashes from his pipe the better to devote
+himself to the narration,--a prince of raconteurs, to judge by the
+spell-bound interest of the youngster who stood at his knee and hung
+on his words. Even Aurelia checked the whir of her wheel to listen
+smilingly. She broke out laughing in appreciative pleasure when Basil
+took up the violin to show how a jovial old bear, who intruded into this
+very house one day when all the family were away at the church in the
+cove, and who mistook the instrument for a banjo, addressed himself to
+picking out this tune, singing the while a quaint and ursine lay. Basil
+embellished the imitation with a masterly effect of realistic growls.
+
+"Ef ye keep goin' at that gait, Basil," Aurelia admonished him,
+"daylight will ketch us all wide awake around the fire,--no wonder the
+child won't go to bed." She seemed suddenly impressed with the pervasive
+cheer. "What a fool that man, Jube Kennedy, must be! How _could_
+ennybody hev a sweeter, darlinger home than we uns hev got hyar in
+Sunrise Gap!"
+
+On the languorous autumn a fierce winter ensued. The cold came early.
+The deciduous growths of the forests were leafless ere November waned,
+rifled by the riotous marauding winds. December set in with the gusty
+snow flying fast. Drear were the gray skies; ghastly the sheeted ranges.
+Drifts piled high in bleak ravines, and the grim gneissoid crags were
+begirt with gigantic icicles. But about the little house in Sunrise
+Gap that kept so warm a heart, the holly trees showed their glad green
+leaves and the red berries glowed with a mystic significance.
+
+As the weeks wore on, the place was often in Kennedy's mind, although
+he had not seen it since that autumn afternoon when he had bestirred
+himself to rebuke its owner concerning the inadequacies of the domestic
+provision. His admonition had been kindly meant and had not deserved
+the retort, the flippant ridicule of his spiritual yearnings. Though he
+still winced from the recollection, he was sorry that he had resisted
+the importunacy of Basil's apology. He realized that Aurelia had
+persisted to the limit of her power in the embitterment of the
+controversy, but even Aurelia he was disposed to forgive as time passed
+on. When Christinas Day dawned, the vague sentiment began to assume the
+definiteness of a purpose, and noontide found him on his way to Sunrise
+Gap.
+
+There was now no path through the woods; the snow lay deep over all,
+unbroken save at long intervals when queer footprints gave token of the
+stirring abroad of the sylvan denizens, and he felt an idle interest in
+distinguishing the steps of wolf and fox, of opossum and weasel. In the
+intricacies of the forest aisles, amid laden boughs of pine and fir,
+there was a suggestion of darkness, but all the sky held not enough
+light to cast the shadow of a bole on the white blank spaces of the
+snow-covered ground. A vague blue haze clothed the air; yet as he drew
+near the mountain brink, all was distinct in the vast landscape, the
+massive ranges and alternating valleys in infinite repetition.
+
+He wondered when near the house that he had not heard the familiar
+barking of the old hound; then he remembered that the sound of his
+horse's hoofs was muffled by the snow. He was glad to be unheralded.
+He would like to surprise Aurelia into geniality before her vicarious
+rancor for Basil's sake should be roused anew. As he emerged from
+the thick growths of the holly, with the icy scintillations of its
+clustering green leaves and red berries, he drew rein so suddenly that
+the horse was thrown back on his haunches. The rider sat as if petrified
+in the presence of an awful disaster.
+
+The house was gone! Even the site had vanished! Kennedy stared
+bewildered. Slowly the realization of what had chanced here began to
+creep through his brain. Evidently there had been a gigantic landslide.
+The cliff-like projection was broken sheer off,--hurled into the depths
+of the valley. Some action of subterranean waters, throughout ages,
+doubtless, had been undermining the great crags till the rocky crust
+of the earth had collapsed. He could see even now how the freeze had
+fractured outcropping ledges where the ice had gathered in the fissures.
+A deep abyss that he remembered as being at a considerable distance
+from the mountain's brink, once spanned by a foot-bridge, now showed
+the remnant of its jagged, shattered walls at the extreme verge of the
+precipice.
+
+A cold chill of horror benumbed his senses. Basil, the wife, the
+children,--where were they? A terrible death, surely, to be torn from
+the warm securities of the hearth-stone, without a moment's warning,
+and hurled into the midst of this frantic turmoil of nature, down to
+the depths of the gap,--a thousand feet below! And at what time had this
+dread fate befallen his friend? He remembered that at the cross-roads'
+store, when he had paused on his way to warm himself that morning, some
+gossip was detailing the phenomenon of unseasonable thunder during the
+previous night, while others protested that it must have been only
+the clamors of "Christmas guns" firing all along the country-side. "A
+turrible clap, it was," the raconteur had persisted. "Sounded ez ef all
+creation hed split apart." Perhaps, therefore, the catastrophe might be
+recent. Kennedy could scarcely command his muscles as he dismounted and
+made his way slowly and cautiously to the verge.
+
+Any deviation from the accustomed routine of nature has an unnerving
+effect, unparalleled by disaster in other sort; no individual danger or
+doom, the aspect of death by drowning, or gunshot, or disease, can so
+abash the reason and stultify normal expectation. Kennedy was scarcely
+conscious that he saw the vast disorder of the landslide, scattered from
+the precipice on the mountain's brink to the depths of the Gap--inverted
+roots of great pines thrust out in mid-air, foundations of crags riven
+asunder and hurled in monstrous fragments along the steep slant, unknown
+streams newly liberated from the caverns of the range and cascading from
+the crevices of the rocks. In effect he could not believe his own eyes.
+His mind realized the perception of his senses only when his heart
+suddenly plunged with a wild hope,--he had discerned amongst the turmoil
+a shape of line and rule, the little box-like hut! Caught as it was in
+the boughs of a cluster of pines and firs, uprooted and thrust out at an
+incline a little less than vertical, the inmates might have been spared
+such shock of the fall as would otherwise have proved fatal. Had the
+house been one of the substantial log-cabins of the region its timbers
+must have been torn one from another, the daubing and chinking scattered
+as mere atoms. But the more flimsy character of the little dwelling
+had thus far served to save it,--the interdependent "framing" of its
+structure held fast; the upright studding and boards, nailed stoutly on,
+rendered it indeed the box that it looked. It was, so to speak, built in
+one piece, and no part was subjected to greater strain than another.
+But should the earth cave anew, should the tough fibres of one of those
+gigantic roots tear out from the loosened friable soil, should the
+elastic supporting branches barely sway in some errant gust of wind, the
+little box would fall hundreds of feet, cracked like a nut, shattering
+against the rocks of the levels below.
+
+He wondered if the inmates yet lived,--he pitied them still more if
+they only existed to realize their peril, to await in an anguish of
+fear their ultimate doom. Perhaps--he felt he was but trifling with
+despair--some rescue might be devised.
+
+Such a weird cry he set up on the brink of the mountain!--full of
+horror, grief, and that poignant hope. The echoes of the Gap seemed
+reluctant to repeat the tones, dull, slow, muffled in snow. But a sturdy
+halloo responded from the window, uppermost now, for the house lay
+on its side amongst the boughs. Kennedy thought he saw the pallid
+simulacrum of a face.
+
+"This be Jube Kennedy," he cried, reassuringly. "I be goin' ter fetch
+help,--men, ropes, and a windlass."
+
+"Make haste then,--we uns be nigh friz."
+
+"Ye air in no danger of fire, then?" asked the practical man.
+
+"We hev hed none,--before we war flunged off'n the bluff we hed
+squinched the fire ter pledjure Bob, ez he war afeard Santy Claus would
+scorch his feet comm' down the chimbley,--powerful lucky fur we uns; the
+fire would hev burnt the house bodaciously."
+
+Kennedy hardly stayed to hear. He was off in a moment, galloping at
+frantic speed along the snowy trail scarcely traceable in the sad light
+of the gray day; taking short cuts through the densities of the laurel;
+torn by jagged rocks and tangles of thorny growths and broken branches
+of great trees; plunging now and again into deep drifts above concealed
+icy chasms, and rescuing with inexpressible difficulty the floundering,
+struggling horse; reaching again the open sheeted roadway, bruised,
+bleeding, exhausted, yet furiously plunging forward, rousing the
+sparsely settled country-side with imperative insistence for help in
+this matter of life or death!
+
+Death, indeed, only,--for the enterprise was pronounced impossible by
+those more experienced than Kennedy. Among the men now on the bluff were
+several who had been employed in the silver mines of this region, and
+they demonstrated conclusively that a rope could not be worked clear of
+the obstructions of the face of the rugged and shattered cliffs; that
+a human being, drawn from the cabin, strapped in a chair, must needs be
+torn from it and flung into the abyss below, or beaten to a frightful
+death against the jagged rocks in the transit.
+
+"But not ef the chair war ter be steadied by a guy-rope from--say--from
+that thar old pine tree over thar," Kennedy insisted, indicating the
+long bole of a partially uprooted and inverted tree on the steeps. "The
+chair would swing cl'ar of the bluff then."
+
+"But, Jube, it is onpossible ter git a guy-rope over ter that
+tree,--more than a man's life is wuth ter try it."
+
+A moment ensued of absolute silence,--space, however, for a hard-fought
+battle.
+
+The aspect of that mad world below, with every condition of creation
+reversed; a mistake in the adjustment of the winch and gear by the
+excited, reluctant, disapproving men; an overstrain on the fibres of the
+long-used rope; a slip on the treacherous ice; the dizzy whirl of the
+senses that even a glance downward at those drear depths set astir in
+the brain,--all were canvassed within his mental processes, all were
+duly realized in their entirety ere he said with a spare dull voice and
+dry lips,--
+
+"Fix ter let me down ter that thar leanin' pine, boys,--I'll kerry a
+guy-rope over thar."
+
+At one side the crag beetled, and although it was impossible thence to
+reach the cabin with a rope it would swing clear of obstructions here,
+and might bring the rescuer within touch of the pine, where could be
+fastened the guy-rope; the other end would be affixed to the chair which
+could be lowered to the cabin only from the rugged face of the cliff.
+Kennedy harbored no self-deception; he more than doubted the outcome of
+the enterprise. He quaked and turned pale with dread as with the great
+rope knotted about his arm-pits and around his waist he was swung over
+the brink at the point where the crag jutted forth,--lower and lower
+still; now nearing the slanting inverted pine, caught amidst the d�bris
+of earth and rock; now failing to reach its boughs; once more swinging
+back to a great distance, so did the length of the rope increase the
+scope of the pendulum; now nearing the pine again, and at last fairly
+lodged on the icy bole, knotting and coiling about it the end of the
+guy-rope, on which he had come and on which he must needs return.
+
+It seemed, through the inexpert handling of the little group, a long
+time before the stout arm-chair was secured to the cables, slowly
+lowered, and landed at last on the outside of the hut. Many an anxious
+glance was cast at the slate-gray sky. An inopportune flurry of snow, a
+flaw of wind:--and even now all would be lost. Dusk too impended, and
+as the rope began to coil on the windlass at the signal to hoist every
+eye was strained to discern the identity of the first voyagers in this
+aerial journey,--the two children, securely lashed to the chair. This
+was well,--all felt that both parents might best wait, might risk
+the added delay. The chair came swinging easily, swiftly, along the
+gradations of the rise, the guy-rope holding it well from the chances
+of contact with the jagged projections of the face of the cliff, and the
+first shout of triumph rang sonorously from the summit.
+
+When next the chair rested on the cabin beside the window, a thrill of
+anxiety and anger went through Kennedy's heart to note, from his perch
+on the leaning pine, a struggle between husband and wife as to who
+should go first. Each was eager to take the many risks incident to the
+long wait in this precarious lodgment. The man was the stronger. Aurelia
+was forced into the chair, tied fast, pushed off, waving' her hand to
+her husband, shedding floods of tears, looking at him for the last time,
+as she fancied, and calling out dismally, "Far'well, Basil, far'-well."
+
+Even this lugubrious demonstration could not damp the spirits of the men
+working like mad at the windlass. They were jovial enough for bursts
+of laughter when it became apparent that Basil had utilized the ensuing
+interval to tie together, in preparation for the ascent with himself,
+the two objects which he next most treasured, his violin and his old
+hound. The trusty chair bore all aloft, and Basil was received with
+welcoming acclamations.
+
+Before the rope was wound anew and for the last time, the aspect of
+the group on the cliff had changed. It had grown eerie, indistinct. The
+pines and firs showed no longer their sempervirent green, but were black
+amid the white tufted lines on their branches, that still served to
+accentuate their symmetry. The vale had disappeared in a sinister abyss
+of gloom, though Kennedy would not look down at its menace, but upward,
+always upward. Thus he saw, like some radiant and splendid star, the
+first torch whitely aglow on the brink of the precipice. It opened long
+avenues of light adown the snowy landscape,--soft blue shadows trailed
+after it, like half-descried draperies of elusive hovering beings. Soon
+the torch was duplicated; another and then another began to glow. Now
+several drew together, and like a constellation glimmered crownlike
+on the brow of the night, as he felt the rope stir with the signal to
+hoist.
+
+Upward, always upward, his eyes on that radiant stellular coronal, as
+it shone white and splendid in the snowy night. And now it had lost its
+mystic glamour,--disintegrated by gradual approach he could see the long
+handles of the pine-knots; the red verges of the flame; the blue and
+yellow tones of the focus; the trailing wreaths of dun-tinted smoke that
+rose from them. Then became visible the faces of the men who held them,
+all crowding eagerly to the verge. But it was in a solemn silence
+that he was received; a drear cold darkness, every torch being stuick
+downward into the snow; a frantic haste in unharnessing him from the
+ropes, for he was almost frozen. He was hardly apt enough to interpret
+this as an emotion too deep for words, but now and again, as he was
+disentangled, he felt about his shoulders a furtive hug, and more than
+one pair of the ministering hands must needs pause to wring his own
+hands hard. They practically carried him to a fire that had been built
+in a sheltered place in one of those grottoes of the region, locally
+called "Rock-houses." Its cavernous portal gave upon a dark interior,
+and not until they had turned a corner in a tunnel-like passage was
+revealed an arched space in a rayonnant suffusion of light, the fire
+itself obscured by the figures about it. His eyes were caught first by
+the aspect of a youthful mother with a golden-haired babe on her breast;
+close by showed the head and horns of a cow; the mule was mercifully
+sheltered too, and stood near, munching his fodder; a cluster of
+sheep pressed after the steps of half a dozen men, that somehow in the
+clare-obscure reminded him of the shepherds of old summoned by good
+tidings of great joy.
+
+A sudden figure started up with streaming white hair and patriarchal
+beard.
+
+"Will ye deny ez ye hev hed a sign from the heavens, Jubal Kennedy?" the
+old circuit-rider straitly demanded. "How could ye hev strengthened yer
+heart fur sech a deed onless the grace o' God prevailed mightily
+within ye? Inasmuch as ye hev done it unto one o' the least o' these my
+brethern, ye hev done it unto me."
+
+"That ain't the _kind_ o' sign, parson," Kennedy faltered. "I be lookin'
+fur a meracle in the yearth or in the air, that I kin view or hear."
+
+"The kingdom o' Christ is a spiritual kingdom," said the parson
+solemnly. "The kingdom o' Christ is a _spiritual_ kingdom, an' great are
+the wonders that are wrought therein."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Christmas Miracle, by 
+Charles Egbert Craddock     (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
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+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
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+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" />
+    <title>
+      The Christmas Miracle, by Charles Egbert Craddock
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
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+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
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+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
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+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
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+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Christmas Miracle, by
+Charles Egbert Craddock     (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Christmas Miracle
+       1911
+
+Author: Charles Egbert Craddock     (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
+Release Date: November 19, 2007 [EBook #23553]
+Last Updated: March 8, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHRISTMAS MIRACLE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      THE CHRISTMAS MIRACLE
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Charles Egbert Craddock <br /> <br /> 1911
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He yearned for a sign from the heavens. Could one intimation be vouchsafed
+      him, how it would confirm his faltering faith! Jubal Kennedy was of the
+      temperament impervious to spiritual subtleties, fain to reach conclusions
+      with the line and rule of mathematical demonstration. Thus, all
+      unreceptive, he looked through the mountain gap, as through some
+      stupendous gateway, on the splendors of autumn; the vast landscape
+      glamorous in a transparent amethystine haze; the foliage of the dense
+      primeval wilderness in the October richness of red and russet; the
+      &ldquo;hunter's moon,&rdquo; a full sphere of illuminated pearl, high in the blue east
+      while yet the dull vermilion sun swung westering above the massive purple
+      heights. He knew how the sap was sinking; that the growths of the year had
+      now failed; presently all would be shrouded in snow, but only to rise
+      again in the reassurance of vernal quickening, to glow anew in the
+      fullness of bloom, to attain eventually the perfection of fruition. And
+      still he was deaf to the reiterated analogy of death, and blind to the
+      immanent obvious prophecy of resurrection and the life to come. His
+      thoughts, as he stood on this jutting crag in Sunrise Gap, were with a
+      recent &ldquo;experience meeting&rdquo; at which he had sought to canvass his
+      spiritual needs. His demand of a sign from the heavens as evidence of the
+      existence of the God of revelation, as assurance of the awakening of
+      divine grace in the human heart, as actual proof that wistful mortality is
+      inherently endowed with immortality, had electrified this symposium.
+      Though it was fashionable, so to speak, in this remote cove among the
+      Great Smoky Mountains, to be repentant in rhetorical involutions and a
+      self-accuser in finespun interpretations of sin, doubt, or more properly
+      an eager questioning, a desire to possess the sacred mysteries of
+      religion, was unprecedented. Kennedy was a proud man, reticent, reserved.
+      Although the old parson, visibly surprised and startled, had gently
+      invited his full confidence, Kennedy had hastily swallowed his words, as
+      best he might, perceiving that the congregation had wholly misinterpreted
+      their true intent and that certain gossips had an unholy relish of the
+      sensation they had caused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thereafter he indulged his poignant longings for the elucidation of the
+      veiled truths only when, as now, he wandered deep in the woods with his
+      rifle on his shoulder. He could not have said to-day that he was nearer an
+      inspiration, a hope, a &ldquo;leading,&rdquo; than heretofore, but as he stood on the
+      crag it was with the effect of a dislocation that he was torn from the
+      solemn theme by an interruption at a vital crisis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The faint vibrations of a violin stirred the reverent hush of the
+      landscape in the blended light of the setting sun and the &ldquo;hunter's moon.&rdquo;
+       Presently the musician came into view, advancing slowly through the aisles
+      of the red autumn forest. A rapt figure it was, swaying in responsive
+      ecstasy with the rhythmic cadence. The head, with its long, blowsy yellow
+      hair, was bowed over the dark polished wood of the instrument; the eyes
+      were half closed; the right arm, despite the eccentric patches on the
+      sleeve of the old brown-jeans coat, moved with free, elastic gestures in
+      all the liberties of a practiced bowing. If he saw the hunter motionless
+      on the brink of the crag, the fiddler gave no intimation. His every
+      faculty was as if enthralled by the swinging iteration of the sweet
+      melancholy melody, rendered with a breadth of effect, an inspiration, it
+      might almost have seemed, incongruous with the infirmities of the crazy
+      old fiddle. He was like a creature under the sway of a spell, and
+      apparently drawn by this dulcet lure of the enchantment of sound was the
+      odd procession that trailed silently after him through these deep mountain
+      fastnesses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A woman came first, arrayed in a ragged purple skirt and a yellow blouse
+      open at the throat, displaying a slender white neck which upheld a face of
+      pensive, inert beauty. She clasped in her arms a delicate infant, ethereal
+      of aspect with its flaxen hair, transparently pallid complexion, and wide
+      blue eyes. It was absolutely quiescent, save that now and then it turned
+      feebly in its waxen hands a little striped red-and-yellow pomegranate. A
+      sturdy blond toddler trudged behind, in a checked blue cotton frock, short
+      enough to disclose cherubic pink feet and legs bare to the knee; he
+      carried that treasure of rural juveniles, a cornstalk violin. An old
+      hound, his tail suavely wagging, padded along the narrow path; and last of
+      all came, with frequent pause to crop the wayside herbage, a large cow,
+      brindled red and white.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The whole fambly!&rdquo; muttered Kennedy. Then, aloud, &ldquo;Why don't you uns
+      kerry the baby, Basil Bedell, an' give yer wife a rest?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the prosaic suggestion the crystal realm of dreams was shattered. The
+      bow, with a quavering discordant scrape upon the strings, paused. Then
+      Bedell slowly mastered the meaning of the interruption.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kerry the baby! Why, Aurely won't let none but herself tech that baby.&rdquo;
+       He laughed as he tossed the tousled yellow hair from his face, and looked
+      over his shoulder to speak to the infant. &ldquo;It air sech a plumb special
+      delightsome peach, it air,&mdash;it air!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The pale face of the child lighted up with a smile of recognition and a
+      faint gleam of mirth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I jes' kem out ennyhows ter drive up the cow,&rdquo; Basil added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Big job,&rdquo; sneered Kennedy. &ldquo;'Pears-like it takes the whole fambly to do
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Such slothful mismanagement was calculated to affront an energetic spirit.
+      Obviously, at this hour the woman should be at home cooking the supper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I follered along ter listen ter the fiddle,&mdash;ef ye hev enny call ter
+      know.&rdquo; Mrs. Bedell replied to his unspoken thought, as if by divination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But indeed such strictures were not heard for the first time. They were in
+      some sort the penalty of the disinterested friendship which Kennedy had
+      harbored for Basil since their childhood. He wished that his compeer might
+      prosper in such simple wise as his own experience had proved to be amply
+      possible. Kennedy's earlier incentive to industry had been his intention
+      to marry, but the object of his affections had found him &ldquo;too mortal
+      solemn,&rdquo; and without a word of warning had married another man in a
+      distant cove. The element of treachery in this event had gone far to
+      reconcile the jilted lover to his future, bereft of her companionship, but
+      the habit of industry thus formed had continued of its own momentum. It
+      had resulted in forehanded thrift; he now possessed a comfortable holding,&mdash;cattle,
+      house, ample land; and he had all the intolerance of the ant for the
+      cricket. As Bedell lifted the bow once more, every wincing nerve was
+      enlisted in arresting it in mid-air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mighty long tramp fur Bobbie, thar,&mdash;why n't ye kerry him!&rdquo; y
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The imperturbable calm still held fast on the musician's face. &ldquo;Bob,&rdquo; he
+      addressed the toddler, &ldquo;will you uns let daddy kerry ye like a baby!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He swooped down as if to lift the child, the violin and bow in his left
+      hand. The hardy youngster backed off precipitately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't ye <i>dare</i> ter do it!&rdquo; he virulently admonished his parent, a
+      resentful light in his blue eyes. Then, as Bedell sang a stave in a full
+      rich voice, &ldquo;Bye-oh, Baby!&rdquo; Bob vociferated anew, &ldquo;Don't you <i>begin</i>
+      ter dare do it!&rdquo; every inch a man though a little one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the kind of a fambly I hev got,&rdquo; Basil commented easily. &ldquo;Wife an'
+      boy an' baby all walk over me,&mdash;plumb stomp on me! Jes' enough lef of
+      me ter play the fiddle a leetle once in a while.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mighty nigh all the while, I be afeared,&rdquo; Kennedy corrected the phrase.
+      &ldquo;How did yer corn crap turn out!&rdquo; he asked, as he too fell into line and
+      the procession moved on once more along the narrow path.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well enough,&rdquo; said Basil; &ldquo;we uns hev got a sufficiency.&rdquo; Then, as if
+      afraid of seeming boastful he qualified, &ldquo;Ye know I hain't got but one
+      muel ter feed, an' the cow thar. My sheep gits thar pastur' on the
+      volunteer grass 'mongst the rocks, an' I hev jes' got a few head
+      ennyhows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But <i>why</i> hain't ye got more, Basil! Why n't ye work more and quit
+      wastin' yer time on that old fool fiddle!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The limits of patience were reached. The musician fired up. &ldquo;'Kase,&rdquo; he
+      retorted, &ldquo;I make enough. I hev got grace enough ter be thankful fur sech
+      ez be vouchsafed ter me. <i>I</i> ain't wantin' no meracle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kennedy flushed, following in silence while the musician annotated his
+      triumph by a series of gay little harmonics, and young Hopeful, trudging
+      in the rear, executed a soundless fantasia on the cornstalk fiddle with
+      great brilliancy of technique.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You uns air talkin' 'bout whut I said at the meetin' las' month,&rdquo; Kennedy
+      observed at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An' so be all the mounting,&rdquo; Aurelia interpolated with a sudden fierce
+      joy of reproof.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kennedy winced visibly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The folks all 'low ez ye be no better than an onbeliever.&rdquo; Aurelia was
+      bent on driving the blade home. &ldquo;The idee of axin' fur a meracle at this
+      late day,&mdash;so ez <i>ye</i> kin be satisfied in yer mind ez ye hev got
+      grace! Providence, though merciful, air <i>obleeged</i>, ter know ez sech
+      air plumb scandalous an' redic'lous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Aurely, hesh up,&rdquo; exclaimed her husband, startled from his wonted
+      leniency. &ldquo;I hev never hearn ye talk in sech a key,&mdash;yer voice sounds
+      plumb out o' tune. I be plumb sorry, Jube, ez I spoke ter you uns 'bout a
+      meracle at all. But I frar consider'ble nettled by yer words, ye see,&mdash;'kase
+      I know I be a powerful, lazy, shif'less cuss&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye know a lie, then,&rdquo; his helpmate interrupted promptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Aurely, hesh up,&mdash;ye&mdash;ye&mdash;<i>woman</i>, ye!&rdquo; he
+      concluded injuriously. Then resuming his remarks to Kennedy, &ldquo;I know I <i>do</i>
+      fool away a deal of my time with the fiddle&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The sound of it is like bread ter me,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I couldn't live without it,&rdquo; interposed the unconquered Aurelia.
+      &ldquo;Sometimes it minds me o' the singin' o' runnin' water in a lonesome
+      place. Then agin it minds me o' seein' sunshine in a dream. An' sometimes
+      it be sweet an' high an' fur off, like a voice from the sky, tellin' what
+      no mortial ever knowed before,&mdash;an' <i>then</i> it minds me o' the
+      tune them angels sung ter the shepherds abidin' in the fields. I <i>couldn't</i>
+      live without it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Woman, hold yer jaw!&rdquo; Basil proclaimed comprehensively. Then, renewing
+      his explanation to Kennedy, &ldquo;I kin see that I don't purvide fur my fambly
+      ez I ought ter do, through hatin' work and lovin' to play the fiddle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ain't goin' ter hear my home an' hearth reviled.&rdquo; Aurelia laid an
+      imperative hand on her husband's arm. &ldquo;Ye know ye couldn 't make more
+      out'n sech ground,&mdash;though I ain't faultin' our land, neither. We uns
+      hev enough an' ter spare, all we need an' more than we deserve. We don't
+      need ter ax a meracle from the skies ter stay our souls on faith, nor a
+      sign ter prove our grace.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, <i>now, stop</i>, Aurely!&mdash;I declar', Jube I dunno what made me
+      lay my tongue ter sech a word ez that thar miser'ble benighted meracle! I
+      be powerful sorry I hurt yer feelin's, Jube; folks seekin' salvation git
+      mightily mis-put sometimes, an'&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>I</i> don't want ter hear none o' yer views on religion,&rdquo; Kennedy
+      interrupted gruffly. An apology often augments the sense of injury. In
+      this instance it also annulled the provocation, for his own admission put
+      Bedell hopelessly in the wrong. &ldquo;Ez a friend I war argufyin' with ye agin'
+      yer waste o' time with that old fool fiddle. Ye hev got wife an' children,
+      an' yit not so well off in this world's gear ez me, a single man. I
+      misdoubts ef ye hev hunted a day since the craps war laid by, or hev got a
+      pound o' jerked venison stored up fer winter. But this air yer home,&rdquo;&mdash;he
+      pointed upward at a little clearing beginning, as they approached, to be
+      visible amidst the forest,&mdash;&ldquo;an' ef ye air satisfied with sech ez it
+      be, that comes from laziness stiddier a contented sperit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With this caustic saying he suddenly left them, the procession standing
+      silently staring after him as he took his way through the woods in the
+      dusky red shadows of the autumnal gloaming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aurelia's vaunted home was indeed a poor place,&mdash;not even the rude
+      though substantial log-cabin common to the region. It was a flimsy shanty
+      of boards, and except for its rickety porch was more like a box than a
+      house. It had its perch on a jutting eminence, where it seemed the
+      familiar of the skies, so did the clouds and winds circle about it.
+      Through the great gateway of Sunrise Gap it commanded a landscape of a
+      scope that might typify a world, in its multitude of mountain ranges, in
+      the intricacies of its intervening valleys, in the glittering coils of its
+      water-courses. Basil would sometimes sink into deep silences, overpowered
+      by the majesty of nature in this place. After a long hiatus the bow would
+      tremble and falter on the strings as if overawed for a time; presently the
+      theme would strengthen, expand, resound with large meaning, and then he
+      would send forth melodies that he had never before played or heard, his
+      own dream, the reflection of that mighty mood of nature in the limpid pool
+      of his receptive mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Around were rocks, crags, chasms,&mdash;the fields which nourished the
+      family lay well from the verge, within the purlieus of the limited
+      mountain plateau. He had sought to persuade himself that it was to save
+      all the arable land for tillage that he had placed his house and door-yard
+      here, but both he and Aurelia were secretly aware of the subterfuge; he
+      would fain be always within the glamour of the prospect through Sunrise
+      Gap!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their interlocutor had truly deemed that the woman should have been
+      earlier at home cooking the supper. Dusk had deepened to darkness long
+      before the meal smoked upon the board. The spinning-wheel had begun to
+      whir for her evening stint when other hill-folks had betaken themselves to
+      bed. Basil puffed his pipe before the fire; the flicker and flare pervaded
+      every nook of the bright little house. Strings of red-pepper-pods flaunted
+      in festoons from the beams; the baby slumbered under a gay quilt in his
+      rude cradle, never far from his mother's hand, but the bluff little boy
+      was still up and about, although his aspect, round and burly, in a scanty
+      nightgown, gave token of recognition of the fact that bed was his
+      appropriate place. His shrill plaintive voice rose ever and anon
+      wakefully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wanter hear a bear tale,&mdash;I wanter hear a bear tale.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus Basil must needs knock the ashes from his pipe the better to devote
+      himself to the narration,&mdash;a prince of raconteurs, to judge by the
+      spell-bound interest of the youngster who stood at his knee and hung on
+      his words. Even Aurelia checked the whir of her wheel to listen smilingly.
+      She broke out laughing in appreciative pleasure when Basil took up the
+      violin to show how a jovial old bear, who intruded into this very house
+      one day when all the family were away at the church in the cove, and who
+      mistook the instrument for a banjo, addressed himself to picking out this
+      tune, singing the while a quaint and ursine lay. Basil embellished the
+      imitation with a masterly effect of realistic growls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ef ye keep goin' at that gait, Basil,&rdquo; Aurelia admonished him, &ldquo;daylight
+      will ketch us all wide awake around the fire,&mdash;no wonder the child
+      won't go to bed.&rdquo; She seemed suddenly impressed with the pervasive cheer.
+      &ldquo;What a fool that man, Jube Kennedy, must be! How <i>could</i> ennybody
+      hev a sweeter, darlinger home than we uns hev got hyar in Sunrise Gap!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On the languorous autumn a fierce winter ensued. The cold came early. The
+      deciduous growths of the forests were leafless ere November waned, rifled
+      by the riotous marauding winds. December set in with the gusty snow flying
+      fast. Drear were the gray skies; ghastly the sheeted ranges. Drifts piled
+      high in bleak ravines, and the grim gneissoid crags were begirt with
+      gigantic icicles. But about the little house in Sunrise Gap that kept so
+      warm a heart, the holly trees showed their glad green leaves and the red
+      berries glowed with a mystic significance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the weeks wore on, the place was often in Kennedy's mind, although he
+      had not seen it since that autumn afternoon when he had bestirred himself
+      to rebuke its owner concerning the inadequacies of the domestic provision.
+      His admonition had been kindly meant and had not deserved the retort, the
+      flippant ridicule of his spiritual yearnings. Though he still winced from
+      the recollection, he was sorry that he had resisted the importunacy of
+      Basil's apology. He realized that Aurelia had persisted to the limit of
+      her power in the embitterment of the controversy, but even Aurelia he was
+      disposed to forgive as time passed on. When Christinas Day dawned, the
+      vague sentiment began to assume the definiteness of a purpose, and
+      noontide found him on his way to Sunrise Gap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was now no path through the woods; the snow lay deep over all,
+      unbroken save at long intervals when queer footprints gave token of the
+      stirring abroad of the sylvan denizens, and he felt an idle interest in
+      distinguishing the steps of wolf and fox, of opossum and weasel. In the
+      intricacies of the forest aisles, amid laden boughs of pine and fir, there
+      was a suggestion of darkness, but all the sky held not enough light to
+      cast the shadow of a bole on the white blank spaces of the snow-covered
+      ground. A vague blue haze clothed the air; yet as he drew near the
+      mountain brink, all was distinct in the vast landscape, the massive ranges
+      and alternating valleys in infinite repetition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He wondered when near the house that he had not heard the familiar barking
+      of the old hound; then he remembered that the sound of his horse's hoofs
+      was muffled by the snow. He was glad to be unheralded. He would like to
+      surprise Aurelia into geniality before her vicarious rancor for Basil's
+      sake should be roused anew. As he emerged from the thick growths of the
+      holly, with the icy scintillations of its clustering green leaves and red
+      berries, he drew rein so suddenly that the horse was thrown back on his
+      haunches. The rider sat as if petrified in the presence of an awful
+      disaster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The house was gone! Even the site had vanished! Kennedy stared bewildered.
+      Slowly the realization of what had chanced here began to creep through his
+      brain. Evidently there had been a gigantic landslide. The cliff-like
+      projection was broken sheer off,&mdash;hurled into the depths of the
+      valley. Some action of subterranean waters, throughout ages, doubtless,
+      had been undermining the great crags till the rocky crust of the earth had
+      collapsed. He could see even now how the freeze had fractured outcropping
+      ledges where the ice had gathered in the fissures. A deep abyss that he
+      remembered as being at a considerable distance from the mountain's brink,
+      once spanned by a foot-bridge, now showed the remnant of its jagged,
+      shattered walls at the extreme verge of the precipice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A cold chill of horror benumbed his senses. Basil, the wife, the children,&mdash;where
+      were they? A terrible death, surely, to be torn from the warm securities
+      of the hearth-stone, without a moment's warning, and hurled into the midst
+      of this frantic turmoil of nature, down to the depths of the gap,&mdash;a
+      thousand feet below! And at what time had this dread fate befallen his
+      friend? He remembered that at the cross-roads' store, when he had paused
+      on his way to warm himself that morning, some gossip was detailing the
+      phenomenon of unseasonable thunder during the previous night, while others
+      protested that it must have been only the clamors of &ldquo;Christmas guns&rdquo;
+       firing all along the country-side. &ldquo;A turrible clap, it was,&rdquo; the
+      raconteur had persisted. &ldquo;Sounded ez ef all creation hed split apart.&rdquo;
+       Perhaps, therefore, the catastrophe might be recent. Kennedy could
+      scarcely command his muscles as he dismounted and made his way slowly and
+      cautiously to the verge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Any deviation from the accustomed routine of nature has an unnerving
+      effect, unparalleled by disaster in other sort; no individual danger or
+      doom, the aspect of death by drowning, or gunshot, or disease, can so
+      abash the reason and stultify normal expectation. Kennedy was scarcely
+      conscious that he saw the vast disorder of the landslide, scattered from
+      the precipice on the mountain's brink to the depths of the Gap&mdash;inverted
+      roots of great pines thrust out in mid-air, foundations of crags riven
+      asunder and hurled in monstrous fragments along the steep slant, unknown
+      streams newly liberated from the caverns of the range and cascading from
+      the crevices of the rocks. In effect he could not believe his own eyes.
+      His mind realized the perception of his senses only when his heart
+      suddenly plunged with a wild hope,&mdash;he had discerned amongst the
+      turmoil a shape of line and rule, the little box-like hut! Caught as it
+      was in the boughs of a cluster of pines and firs, uprooted and thrust out
+      at an incline a little less than vertical, the inmates might have been
+      spared such shock of the fall as would otherwise have proved fatal. Had
+      the house been one of the substantial log-cabins of the region its timbers
+      must have been torn one from another, the daubing and chinking scattered
+      as mere atoms. But the more flimsy character of the little dwelling had
+      thus far served to save it,&mdash;the interdependent &ldquo;framing&rdquo; of its
+      structure held fast; the upright studding and boards, nailed stoutly on,
+      rendered it indeed the box that it looked. It was, so to speak, built in
+      one piece, and no part was subjected to greater strain than another. But
+      should the earth cave anew, should the tough fibres of one of those
+      gigantic roots tear out from the loosened friable soil, should the elastic
+      supporting branches barely sway in some errant gust of wind, the little
+      box would fall hundreds of feet, cracked like a nut, shattering against
+      the rocks of the levels below.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He wondered if the inmates yet lived,&mdash;he pitied them still more if
+      they only existed to realize their peril, to await in an anguish of fear
+      their ultimate doom. Perhaps&mdash;he felt he was but trifling with
+      despair&mdash;some rescue might be devised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such a weird cry he set up on the brink of the mountain!&mdash;full of
+      horror, grief, and that poignant hope. The echoes of the Gap seemed
+      reluctant to repeat the tones, dull, slow, muffled in snow. But a sturdy
+      halloo responded from the window, uppermost now, for the house lay on its
+      side amongst the boughs. Kennedy thought he saw the pallid simulacrum of a
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This be Jube Kennedy,&rdquo; he cried, reassuringly. &ldquo;I be goin' ter fetch
+      help,&mdash;men, ropes, and a windlass.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Make haste then,&mdash;we uns be nigh friz.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye air in no danger of fire, then?&rdquo; asked the practical man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We hev hed none,&mdash;before we war flunged off'n the bluff we hed
+      squinched the fire ter pledjure Bob, ez he war afeard Santy Claus would
+      scorch his feet comm' down the chimbley,&mdash;powerful lucky fur we uns;
+      the fire would hev burnt the house bodaciously.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kennedy hardly stayed to hear. He was off in a moment, galloping at
+      frantic speed along the snowy trail scarcely traceable in the sad light of
+      the gray day; taking short cuts through the densities of the laurel; torn
+      by jagged rocks and tangles of thorny growths and broken branches of great
+      trees; plunging now and again into deep drifts above concealed icy chasms,
+      and rescuing with inexpressible difficulty the floundering, struggling
+      horse; reaching again the open sheeted roadway, bruised, bleeding,
+      exhausted, yet furiously plunging forward, rousing the sparsely settled
+      country-side with imperative insistence for help in this matter of life or
+      death!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Death, indeed, only,&mdash;for the enterprise was pronounced impossible by
+      those more experienced than Kennedy. Among the men now on the bluff were
+      several who had been employed in the silver mines of this region, and they
+      demonstrated conclusively that a rope could not be worked clear of the
+      obstructions of the face of the rugged and shattered cliffs; that a human
+      being, drawn from the cabin, strapped in a chair, must needs be torn from
+      it and flung into the abyss below, or beaten to a frightful death against
+      the jagged rocks in the transit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But not ef the chair war ter be steadied by a guy-rope from&mdash;say&mdash;from
+      that thar old pine tree over thar,&rdquo; Kennedy insisted, indicating the long
+      bole of a partially uprooted and inverted tree on the steeps. &ldquo;The chair
+      would swing cl'ar of the bluff then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Jube, it is onpossible ter git a guy-rope over ter that tree,&mdash;more
+      than a man's life is wuth ter try it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A moment ensued of absolute silence,&mdash;space, however, for a
+      hard-fought battle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The aspect of that mad world below, with every condition of creation
+      reversed; a mistake in the adjustment of the winch and gear by the
+      excited, reluctant, disapproving men; an overstrain on the fibres of the
+      long-used rope; a slip on the treacherous ice; the dizzy whirl of the
+      senses that even a glance downward at those drear depths set astir in the
+      brain,&mdash;all were canvassed within his mental processes, all were duly
+      realized in their entirety ere he said with a spare dull voice and dry
+      lips,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fix ter let me down ter that thar leanin' pine, boys,&mdash;I'll kerry a
+      guy-rope over thar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At one side the crag beetled, and although it was impossible thence to
+      reach the cabin with a rope it would swing clear of obstructions here, and
+      might bring the rescuer within touch of the pine, where could be fastened
+      the guy-rope; the other end would be affixed to the chair which could be
+      lowered to the cabin only from the rugged face of the cliff. Kennedy
+      harbored no self-deception; he more than doubted the outcome of the
+      enterprise. He quaked and turned pale with dread as with the great rope
+      knotted about his arm-pits and around his waist he was swung over the
+      brink at the point where the crag jutted forth,&mdash;lower and lower
+      still; now nearing the slanting inverted pine, caught amidst the débris of
+      earth and rock; now failing to reach its boughs; once more swinging back
+      to a great distance, so did the length of the rope increase the scope of
+      the pendulum; now nearing the pine again, and at last fairly lodged on the
+      icy bole, knotting and coiling about it the end of the guy-rope, on which
+      he had come and on which he must needs return.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed, through the inexpert handling of the little group, a long time
+      before the stout arm-chair was secured to the cables, slowly lowered, and
+      landed at last on the outside of the hut. Many an anxious glance was cast
+      at the slate-gray sky. An inopportune flurry of snow, a flaw of wind:&mdash;and
+      even now all would be lost. Dusk too impended, and as the rope began to
+      coil on the windlass at the signal to hoist every eye was strained to
+      discern the identity of the first voyagers in this aerial journey,&mdash;the
+      two children, securely lashed to the chair. This was well,&mdash;all felt
+      that both parents might best wait, might risk the added delay. The chair
+      came swinging easily, swiftly, along the gradations of the rise, the
+      guy-rope holding it well from the chances of contact with the jagged
+      projections of the face of the cliff, and the first shout of triumph rang
+      sonorously from the summit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When next the chair rested on the cabin beside the window, a thrill of
+      anxiety and anger went through Kennedy's heart to note, from his perch on
+      the leaning pine, a struggle between husband and wife as to who should go
+      first. Each was eager to take the many risks incident to the long wait in
+      this precarious lodgment. The man was the stronger. Aurelia was forced
+      into the chair, tied fast, pushed off, waving' her hand to her husband,
+      shedding floods of tears, looking at him for the last time, as she
+      fancied, and calling out dismally, &ldquo;Far'well, Basil, far'-well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Even this lugubrious demonstration could not damp the spirits of the men
+      working like mad at the windlass. They were jovial enough for bursts of
+      laughter when it became apparent that Basil had utilized the ensuing
+      interval to tie together, in preparation for the ascent with himself, the
+      two objects which he next most treasured, his violin and his old hound.
+      The trusty chair bore all aloft, and Basil was received with welcoming
+      acclamations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before the rope was wound anew and for the last time, the aspect of the
+      group on the cliff had changed. It had grown eerie, indistinct. The pines
+      and firs showed no longer their sempervirent green, but were black amid
+      the white tufted lines on their branches, that still served to accentuate
+      their symmetry. The vale had disappeared in a sinister abyss of gloom,
+      though Kennedy would not look down at its menace, but upward, always
+      upward. Thus he saw, like some radiant and splendid star, the first torch
+      whitely aglow on the brink of the precipice. It opened long avenues of
+      light adown the snowy landscape,&mdash;soft blue shadows trailed after it,
+      like half-descried draperies of elusive hovering beings. Soon the torch
+      was duplicated; another and then another began to glow. Now several drew
+      together, and like a constellation glimmered crownlike on the brow of the
+      night, as he felt the rope stir with the signal to hoist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upward, always upward, his eyes on that radiant stellular coronal, as it
+      shone white and splendid in the snowy night. And now it had lost its
+      mystic glamour,&mdash;disintegrated by gradual approach he could see the
+      long handles of the pine-knots; the red verges of the flame; the blue and
+      yellow tones of the focus; the trailing wreaths of dun-tinted smoke that
+      rose from them. Then became visible the faces of the men who held them,
+      all crowding eagerly to the verge. But it was in a solemn silence that he
+      was received; a drear cold darkness, every torch being stuick downward
+      into the snow; a frantic haste in unharnessing him from the ropes, for he
+      was almost frozen. He was hardly apt enough to interpret this as an
+      emotion too deep for words, but now and again, as he was disentangled, he
+      felt about his shoulders a furtive hug, and more than one pair of the
+      ministering hands must needs pause to wring his own hands hard. They
+      practically carried him to a fire that had been built in a sheltered place
+      in one of those grottoes of the region, locally called &ldquo;Rock-houses.&rdquo; Its
+      cavernous portal gave upon a dark interior, and not until they had turned
+      a corner in a tunnel-like passage was revealed an arched space in a
+      rayonnant suffusion of light, the fire itself obscured by the figures
+      about it. His eyes were caught first by the aspect of a youthful mother
+      with a golden-haired babe on her breast; close by showed the head and
+      horns of a cow; the mule was mercifully sheltered too, and stood near,
+      munching his fodder; a cluster of sheep pressed after the steps of half a
+      dozen men, that somehow in the clare-obscure reminded him of the shepherds
+      of old summoned by good tidings of great joy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A sudden figure started up with streaming white hair and patriarchal
+      beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will ye deny ez ye hev hed a sign from the heavens, Jubal Kennedy?&rdquo; the
+      old circuit-rider straitly demanded. &ldquo;How could ye hev strengthened yer
+      heart fur sech a deed onless the grace o' God prevailed mightily within
+      ye? Inasmuch as ye hev done it unto one o' the least o' these my brethern,
+      ye hev done it unto me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That ain't the <i>kind</i> o' sign, parson,&rdquo; Kennedy faltered. &ldquo;I be
+      lookin' fur a meracle in the yearth or in the air, that I kin view or
+      hear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The kingdom o' Christ is a spiritual kingdom,&rdquo; said the parson solemnly.
+      &ldquo;The kingdom o' Christ is a <i>spiritual</i> kingdom, an' great are the
+      wonders that are wrought therein.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
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+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Christmas Miracle, by
+Charles Egbert Craddock     (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Christmas Miracle
+       1911
+
+Author: Charles Egbert Craddock     (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
+Release Date: November 19, 2007 [EBook #23553]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHRISTMAS MIRACLE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE CHRISTMAS MIRACLE
+
+By Charles Egbert Craddock
+
+1911
+
+
+He yearned for a sign from the heavens. Could one intimation be
+vouchsafed him, how it would confirm his faltering faith! Jubal Kennedy
+was of the temperament impervious to spiritual subtleties, fain to reach
+conclusions with the line and rule of mathematical demonstration. Thus,
+all unreceptive, he looked through the mountain gap, as through some
+stupendous gateway, on the splendors of autumn; the vast landscape
+glamorous in a transparent amethystine haze; the foliage of the dense
+primeval wilderness in the October richness of red and russet; the
+"hunter's moon," a full sphere of illuminated pearl, high in the blue
+east while yet the dull vermilion sun swung westering above the massive
+purple heights. He knew how the sap was sinking; that the growths of the
+year had now failed; presently all would be shrouded in snow, but only
+to rise again in the reassurance of vernal quickening, to glow anew in
+the fullness of bloom, to attain eventually the perfection of fruition.
+And still he was deaf to the reiterated analogy of death, and blind to
+the immanent obvious prophecy of resurrection and the life to come. His
+thoughts, as he stood on this jutting crag in Sunrise Gap, were with
+a recent "experience meeting" at which he had sought to canvass his
+spiritual needs. His demand of a sign from the heavens as evidence of
+the existence of the God of revelation, as assurance of the awakening of
+divine grace in the human heart, as actual proof that wistful mortality
+is inherently endowed with immortality, had electrified this symposium.
+Though it was fashionable, so to speak, in this remote cove among the
+Great Smoky Mountains, to be repentant in rhetorical involutions and a
+self-accuser in finespun interpretations of sin, doubt, or more properly
+an eager questioning, a desire to possess the sacred mysteries of
+religion, was unprecedented. Kennedy was a proud man, reticent,
+reserved. Although the old parson, visibly surprised and startled, had
+gently invited his full confidence, Kennedy had hastily swallowed his
+words, as best he might, perceiving that the congregation had wholly
+misinterpreted their true intent and that certain gossips had an unholy
+relish of the sensation they had caused.
+
+Thereafter he indulged his poignant longings for the elucidation of the
+veiled truths only when, as now, he wandered deep in the woods with his
+rifle on his shoulder. He could not have said to-day that he was nearer
+an inspiration, a hope, a "leading," than heretofore, but as he stood on
+the crag it was with the effect of a dislocation that he was torn from
+the solemn theme by an interruption at a vital crisis.
+
+The faint vibrations of a violin stirred the reverent hush of the
+landscape in the blended light of the setting sun and the "hunter's
+moon." Presently the musician came into view, advancing slowly through
+the aisles of the red autumn forest. A rapt figure it was, swaying in
+responsive ecstasy with the rhythmic cadence. The head, with its
+long, blowsy yellow hair, was bowed over the dark polished wood of
+the instrument; the eyes were half closed; the right arm, despite the
+eccentric patches on the sleeve of the old brown-jeans coat, moved with
+free, elastic gestures in all the liberties of a practiced bowing. If he
+saw the hunter motionless on the brink of the crag, the fiddler gave
+no intimation. His every faculty was as if enthralled by the swinging
+iteration of the sweet melancholy melody, rendered with a breadth of
+effect, an inspiration, it might almost have seemed, incongruous with
+the infirmities of the crazy old fiddle. He was like a creature under
+the sway of a spell, and apparently drawn by this dulcet lure of the
+enchantment of sound was the odd procession that trailed silently after
+him through these deep mountain fastnesses.
+
+A woman came first, arrayed in a ragged purple skirt and a yellow blouse
+open at the throat, displaying a slender white neck which upheld a face
+of pensive, inert beauty. She clasped in her arms a delicate infant,
+ethereal of aspect with its flaxen hair, transparently pallid
+complexion, and wide blue eyes. It was absolutely quiescent, save
+that now and then it turned feebly in its waxen hands a little striped
+red-and-yellow pomegranate. A sturdy blond toddler trudged behind, in a
+checked blue cotton frock, short enough to disclose cherubic pink feet
+and legs bare to the knee; he carried that treasure of rural juveniles,
+a cornstalk violin. An old hound, his tail suavely wagging, padded along
+the narrow path; and last of all came, with frequent pause to crop the
+wayside herbage, a large cow, brindled red and white.
+
+"The whole fambly!" muttered Kennedy. Then, aloud, "Why don't you uns
+kerry the baby, Basil Bedell, an' give yer wife a rest?"
+
+At the prosaic suggestion the crystal realm of dreams was shattered. The
+bow, with a quavering discordant scrape upon the strings, paused. Then
+Bedell slowly mastered the meaning of the interruption.
+
+"Kerry the baby! Why, Aurely won't let none but herself tech that baby."
+He laughed as he tossed the tousled yellow hair from his face, and
+looked over his shoulder to speak to the infant. "It air sech a plumb
+special delightsome peach, it air,--it air!"
+
+The pale face of the child lighted up with a smile of recognition and a
+faint gleam of mirth.
+
+"I jes' kem out ennyhows ter drive up the cow," Basil added.
+
+"Big job," sneered Kennedy. "'Pears-like it takes the whole fambly to do
+it."
+
+Such slothful mismanagement was calculated to affront an energetic
+spirit. Obviously, at this hour the woman should be at home cooking the
+supper.
+
+"I follered along ter listen ter the fiddle,--ef ye hev enny call ter
+know." Mrs. Bedell replied to his unspoken thought, as if by divination.
+
+But indeed such strictures were not heard for the first time. They were
+in some sort the penalty of the disinterested friendship which Kennedy
+had harbored for Basil since their childhood. He wished that his compeer
+might prosper in such simple wise as his own experience had proved to
+be amply possible. Kennedy's earlier incentive to industry had been his
+intention to marry, but the object of his affections had found him "too
+mortal solemn," and without a word of warning had married another man in
+a distant cove. The element of treachery in this event had gone far to
+reconcile the jilted lover to his future, bereft of her companionship,
+but the habit of industry thus formed had continued of its own momentum.
+It had resulted in forehanded thrift; he now possessed a comfortable
+holding,--cattle, house, ample land; and he had all the intolerance
+of the ant for the cricket. As Bedell lifted the bow once more, every
+wincing nerve was enlisted in arresting it in mid-air.
+
+"Mighty long tramp fur Bobbie, thar,--why n't ye kerry him!" y
+
+The imperturbable calm still held fast on the musician's face. "Bob," he
+addressed the toddler, "will you uns let daddy kerry ye like a baby!"
+
+He swooped down as if to lift the child, the violin and bow in his left
+hand. The hardy youngster backed off precipitately.
+
+"Don't ye _dare_ ter do it!" he virulently admonished his parent, a
+resentful light in his blue eyes. Then, as Bedell sang a stave in a full
+rich voice, "Bye-oh, Baby!" Bob vociferated anew, "Don't you _begin_ ter
+dare do it!" every inch a man though a little one.
+
+"That's the kind of a fambly I hev got," Basil commented easily. "Wife
+an' boy an' baby all walk over me,--plumb stomp on me! Jes' enough lef
+of me ter play the fiddle a leetle once in a while."
+
+"Mighty nigh all the while, I be afeared," Kennedy corrected the phrase.
+"How did yer corn crap turn out!" he asked, as he too fell into line and
+the procession moved on once more along the narrow path.
+
+"Well enough," said Basil; "we uns hev got a sufficiency." Then, as if
+afraid of seeming boastful he qualified, "Ye know I hain't got but
+one muel ter feed, an' the cow thar. My sheep gits thar pastur' on
+the volunteer grass 'mongst the rocks, an' I hev jes' got a few head
+ennyhows."
+
+"But _why_ hain't ye got more, Basil! Why n't ye work more and quit
+wastin' yer time on that old fool fiddle!"
+
+The limits of patience were reached. The musician fired up. "'Kase,"
+he retorted, "I make enough. I hev got grace enough ter be thankful fur
+sech ez be vouchsafed ter me. _I_ ain't wantin' no meracle."
+
+Kennedy flushed, following in silence while the musician annotated his
+triumph by a series of gay little harmonics, and young Hopeful, trudging
+in the rear, executed a soundless fantasia on the cornstalk fiddle with
+great brilliancy of technique.
+
+"You uns air talkin' 'bout whut I said at the meetin' las' month,"
+Kennedy observed at length.
+
+"An' so be all the mounting," Aurelia interpolated with a sudden fierce
+joy of reproof.
+
+Kennedy winced visibly.
+
+"The folks all 'low ez ye be no better than an onbeliever." Aurelia was
+bent on driving the blade home. "The idee of axin' fur a meracle at this
+late day,--so ez _ye_ kin be satisfied in yer mind ez ye hev got grace!
+Providence, though merciful, air _obleeged_, ter know ez sech air plumb
+scandalous an' redic'lous."
+
+"Why, Aurely, hesh up," exclaimed her husband, startled from his wonted
+leniency. "I hev never hearn ye talk in sech a key,--yer voice sounds
+plumb out o' tune. I be plumb sorry, Jube, ez I spoke ter you uns 'bout
+a meracle at all. But I frar consider'ble nettled by yer words, ye
+see,--'kase I know I be a powerful, lazy, shif'less cuss----"
+
+"Ye know a lie, then," his helpmate interrupted promptly.
+
+"Why, Aurely, hesh up,--ye--ye--_woman_, ye!" he concluded injuriously.
+Then resuming his remarks to Kennedy, "I know I _do_ fool away a deal of
+my time with the fiddle----"
+
+"The sound of it is like bread ter me,--
+
+"I couldn't live without it," interposed the unconquered Aurelia.
+"Sometimes it minds me o' the singin' o' runnin' water in a lonesome
+place. Then agin it minds me o' seein' sunshine in a dream. An'
+sometimes it be sweet an' high an' fur off, like a voice from the sky,
+tellin' what no mortial ever knowed before,--an' _then_ it minds me o'
+the tune them angels sung ter the shepherds abidin' in the fields. I
+_couldn't_ live without it."
+
+"Woman, hold yer jaw!" Basil proclaimed comprehensively. Then, renewing
+his explanation to Kennedy, "I kin see that I don't purvide fur my
+fambly ez I ought ter do, through hatin' work and lovin' to play the
+fiddle."
+
+"I ain't goin' ter hear my home an' hearth reviled." Aurelia laid an
+imperative hand on her husband's arm. "Ye know ye couldn 't make more
+out'n sech ground,--though I ain't faultin' our land, neither. We uns
+hev enough an' ter spare, all we need an' more than we deserve. We don't
+need ter ax a meracle from the skies ter stay our souls on faith, nor a
+sign ter prove our grace."
+
+"Now, _now, stop_, Aurely!--I declar', Jube I dunno what made me lay my
+tongue ter sech a word ez that thar miser'ble benighted meracle! I be
+powerful sorry I hurt yer feelin's, Jube; folks seekin' salvation git
+mightily mis-put sometimes, an'----"
+
+"_I_ don't want ter hear none o' yer views on religion," Kennedy
+interrupted gruffly. An apology often augments the sense of injury. In
+this instance it also annulled the provocation, for his own admission
+put Bedell hopelessly in the wrong. "Ez a friend I war argufyin' with ye
+agin' yer waste o' time with that old fool fiddle. Ye hev got wife an'
+children, an' yit not so well off in this world's gear ez me, a single
+man. I misdoubts ef ye hev hunted a day since the craps war laid by, or
+hev got a pound o' jerked venison stored up fer winter. But this air
+yer home,"--he pointed upward at a little clearing beginning, as they
+approached, to be visible amidst the forest,--"an' ef ye air satisfied
+with sech ez it be, that comes from laziness stiddier a contented
+sperit."
+
+With this caustic saying he suddenly left them, the procession standing
+silently staring after him as he took his way through the woods in the
+dusky red shadows of the autumnal gloaming.
+
+Aurelia's vaunted home was indeed a poor place,--not even the rude
+though substantial log-cabin common to the region. It was a flimsy
+shanty of boards, and except for its rickety porch was more like a box
+than a house. It had its perch on a jutting eminence, where it seemed
+the familiar of the skies, so did the clouds and winds circle about it.
+Through the great gateway of Sunrise Gap it commanded a landscape of a
+scope that might typify a world, in its multitude of mountain ranges, in
+the intricacies of its intervening valleys, in the glittering coils
+of its water-courses. Basil would sometimes sink into deep silences,
+overpowered by the majesty of nature in this place. After a long hiatus
+the bow would tremble and falter on the strings as if overawed for a
+time; presently the theme would strengthen, expand, resound with large
+meaning, and then he would send forth melodies that he had never before
+played or heard, his own dream, the reflection of that mighty mood of
+nature in the limpid pool of his receptive mind.
+
+Around were rocks, crags, chasms,--the fields which nourished the family
+lay well from the verge, within the purlieus of the limited mountain
+plateau. He had sought to persuade himself that it was to save all the
+arable land for tillage that he had placed his house and door-yard here,
+but both he and Aurelia were secretly aware of the subterfuge; he would
+fain be always within the glamour of the prospect through Sunrise Gap!
+
+Their interlocutor had truly deemed that the woman should have been
+earlier at home cooking the supper. Dusk had deepened to darkness long
+before the meal smoked upon the board. The spinning-wheel had begun to
+whir for her evening stint when other hill-folks had betaken themselves
+to bed. Basil puffed his pipe before the fire; the flicker and
+flare pervaded every nook of the bright little house. Strings of
+red-pepper-pods flaunted in festoons from the beams; the baby slumbered
+under a gay quilt in his rude cradle, never far from his mother's hand,
+but the bluff little boy was still up and about, although his aspect,
+round and burly, in a scanty nightgown, gave token of recognition of the
+fact that bed was his appropriate place. His shrill plaintive voice rose
+ever and anon wakefully.
+
+"I wanter hear a bear tale,--I wanter hear a bear tale."
+
+Thus Basil must needs knock the ashes from his pipe the better to devote
+himself to the narration,--a prince of raconteurs, to judge by the
+spell-bound interest of the youngster who stood at his knee and hung
+on his words. Even Aurelia checked the whir of her wheel to listen
+smilingly. She broke out laughing in appreciative pleasure when Basil
+took up the violin to show how a jovial old bear, who intruded into this
+very house one day when all the family were away at the church in the
+cove, and who mistook the instrument for a banjo, addressed himself to
+picking out this tune, singing the while a quaint and ursine lay. Basil
+embellished the imitation with a masterly effect of realistic growls.
+
+"Ef ye keep goin' at that gait, Basil," Aurelia admonished him,
+"daylight will ketch us all wide awake around the fire,--no wonder the
+child won't go to bed." She seemed suddenly impressed with the pervasive
+cheer. "What a fool that man, Jube Kennedy, must be! How _could_
+ennybody hev a sweeter, darlinger home than we uns hev got hyar in
+Sunrise Gap!"
+
+On the languorous autumn a fierce winter ensued. The cold came early.
+The deciduous growths of the forests were leafless ere November waned,
+rifled by the riotous marauding winds. December set in with the gusty
+snow flying fast. Drear were the gray skies; ghastly the sheeted ranges.
+Drifts piled high in bleak ravines, and the grim gneissoid crags were
+begirt with gigantic icicles. But about the little house in Sunrise
+Gap that kept so warm a heart, the holly trees showed their glad green
+leaves and the red berries glowed with a mystic significance.
+
+As the weeks wore on, the place was often in Kennedy's mind, although
+he had not seen it since that autumn afternoon when he had bestirred
+himself to rebuke its owner concerning the inadequacies of the domestic
+provision. His admonition had been kindly meant and had not deserved
+the retort, the flippant ridicule of his spiritual yearnings. Though he
+still winced from the recollection, he was sorry that he had resisted
+the importunacy of Basil's apology. He realized that Aurelia had
+persisted to the limit of her power in the embitterment of the
+controversy, but even Aurelia he was disposed to forgive as time passed
+on. When Christinas Day dawned, the vague sentiment began to assume the
+definiteness of a purpose, and noontide found him on his way to Sunrise
+Gap.
+
+There was now no path through the woods; the snow lay deep over all,
+unbroken save at long intervals when queer footprints gave token of the
+stirring abroad of the sylvan denizens, and he felt an idle interest in
+distinguishing the steps of wolf and fox, of opossum and weasel. In the
+intricacies of the forest aisles, amid laden boughs of pine and fir,
+there was a suggestion of darkness, but all the sky held not enough
+light to cast the shadow of a bole on the white blank spaces of the
+snow-covered ground. A vague blue haze clothed the air; yet as he drew
+near the mountain brink, all was distinct in the vast landscape, the
+massive ranges and alternating valleys in infinite repetition.
+
+He wondered when near the house that he had not heard the familiar
+barking of the old hound; then he remembered that the sound of his
+horse's hoofs was muffled by the snow. He was glad to be unheralded.
+He would like to surprise Aurelia into geniality before her vicarious
+rancor for Basil's sake should be roused anew. As he emerged from
+the thick growths of the holly, with the icy scintillations of its
+clustering green leaves and red berries, he drew rein so suddenly that
+the horse was thrown back on his haunches. The rider sat as if petrified
+in the presence of an awful disaster.
+
+The house was gone! Even the site had vanished! Kennedy stared
+bewildered. Slowly the realization of what had chanced here began to
+creep through his brain. Evidently there had been a gigantic landslide.
+The cliff-like projection was broken sheer off,--hurled into the depths
+of the valley. Some action of subterranean waters, throughout ages,
+doubtless, had been undermining the great crags till the rocky crust
+of the earth had collapsed. He could see even now how the freeze had
+fractured outcropping ledges where the ice had gathered in the fissures.
+A deep abyss that he remembered as being at a considerable distance
+from the mountain's brink, once spanned by a foot-bridge, now showed
+the remnant of its jagged, shattered walls at the extreme verge of the
+precipice.
+
+A cold chill of horror benumbed his senses. Basil, the wife, the
+children,--where were they? A terrible death, surely, to be torn from
+the warm securities of the hearth-stone, without a moment's warning,
+and hurled into the midst of this frantic turmoil of nature, down to
+the depths of the gap,--a thousand feet below! And at what time had this
+dread fate befallen his friend? He remembered that at the cross-roads'
+store, when he had paused on his way to warm himself that morning, some
+gossip was detailing the phenomenon of unseasonable thunder during the
+previous night, while others protested that it must have been only
+the clamors of "Christmas guns" firing all along the country-side. "A
+turrible clap, it was," the raconteur had persisted. "Sounded ez ef all
+creation hed split apart." Perhaps, therefore, the catastrophe might be
+recent. Kennedy could scarcely command his muscles as he dismounted and
+made his way slowly and cautiously to the verge.
+
+Any deviation from the accustomed routine of nature has an unnerving
+effect, unparalleled by disaster in other sort; no individual danger or
+doom, the aspect of death by drowning, or gunshot, or disease, can so
+abash the reason and stultify normal expectation. Kennedy was scarcely
+conscious that he saw the vast disorder of the landslide, scattered from
+the precipice on the mountain's brink to the depths of the Gap--inverted
+roots of great pines thrust out in mid-air, foundations of crags riven
+asunder and hurled in monstrous fragments along the steep slant, unknown
+streams newly liberated from the caverns of the range and cascading from
+the crevices of the rocks. In effect he could not believe his own eyes.
+His mind realized the perception of his senses only when his heart
+suddenly plunged with a wild hope,--he had discerned amongst the turmoil
+a shape of line and rule, the little box-like hut! Caught as it was in
+the boughs of a cluster of pines and firs, uprooted and thrust out at an
+incline a little less than vertical, the inmates might have been spared
+such shock of the fall as would otherwise have proved fatal. Had the
+house been one of the substantial log-cabins of the region its timbers
+must have been torn one from another, the daubing and chinking scattered
+as mere atoms. But the more flimsy character of the little dwelling
+had thus far served to save it,--the interdependent "framing" of its
+structure held fast; the upright studding and boards, nailed stoutly on,
+rendered it indeed the box that it looked. It was, so to speak, built in
+one piece, and no part was subjected to greater strain than another.
+But should the earth cave anew, should the tough fibres of one of those
+gigantic roots tear out from the loosened friable soil, should the
+elastic supporting branches barely sway in some errant gust of wind, the
+little box would fall hundreds of feet, cracked like a nut, shattering
+against the rocks of the levels below.
+
+He wondered if the inmates yet lived,--he pitied them still more if
+they only existed to realize their peril, to await in an anguish of
+fear their ultimate doom. Perhaps--he felt he was but trifling with
+despair--some rescue might be devised.
+
+Such a weird cry he set up on the brink of the mountain!--full of
+horror, grief, and that poignant hope. The echoes of the Gap seemed
+reluctant to repeat the tones, dull, slow, muffled in snow. But a sturdy
+halloo responded from the window, uppermost now, for the house lay
+on its side amongst the boughs. Kennedy thought he saw the pallid
+simulacrum of a face.
+
+"This be Jube Kennedy," he cried, reassuringly. "I be goin' ter fetch
+help,--men, ropes, and a windlass."
+
+"Make haste then,--we uns be nigh friz."
+
+"Ye air in no danger of fire, then?" asked the practical man.
+
+"We hev hed none,--before we war flunged off'n the bluff we hed
+squinched the fire ter pledjure Bob, ez he war afeard Santy Claus would
+scorch his feet comm' down the chimbley,--powerful lucky fur we uns; the
+fire would hev burnt the house bodaciously."
+
+Kennedy hardly stayed to hear. He was off in a moment, galloping at
+frantic speed along the snowy trail scarcely traceable in the sad light
+of the gray day; taking short cuts through the densities of the laurel;
+torn by jagged rocks and tangles of thorny growths and broken branches
+of great trees; plunging now and again into deep drifts above concealed
+icy chasms, and rescuing with inexpressible difficulty the floundering,
+struggling horse; reaching again the open sheeted roadway, bruised,
+bleeding, exhausted, yet furiously plunging forward, rousing the
+sparsely settled country-side with imperative insistence for help in
+this matter of life or death!
+
+Death, indeed, only,--for the enterprise was pronounced impossible by
+those more experienced than Kennedy. Among the men now on the bluff were
+several who had been employed in the silver mines of this region, and
+they demonstrated conclusively that a rope could not be worked clear of
+the obstructions of the face of the rugged and shattered cliffs; that
+a human being, drawn from the cabin, strapped in a chair, must needs be
+torn from it and flung into the abyss below, or beaten to a frightful
+death against the jagged rocks in the transit.
+
+"But not ef the chair war ter be steadied by a guy-rope from--say--from
+that thar old pine tree over thar," Kennedy insisted, indicating the
+long bole of a partially uprooted and inverted tree on the steeps. "The
+chair would swing cl'ar of the bluff then."
+
+"But, Jube, it is onpossible ter git a guy-rope over ter that
+tree,--more than a man's life is wuth ter try it."
+
+A moment ensued of absolute silence,--space, however, for a hard-fought
+battle.
+
+The aspect of that mad world below, with every condition of creation
+reversed; a mistake in the adjustment of the winch and gear by the
+excited, reluctant, disapproving men; an overstrain on the fibres of the
+long-used rope; a slip on the treacherous ice; the dizzy whirl of the
+senses that even a glance downward at those drear depths set astir in
+the brain,--all were canvassed within his mental processes, all were
+duly realized in their entirety ere he said with a spare dull voice and
+dry lips,--
+
+"Fix ter let me down ter that thar leanin' pine, boys,--I'll kerry a
+guy-rope over thar."
+
+At one side the crag beetled, and although it was impossible thence to
+reach the cabin with a rope it would swing clear of obstructions here,
+and might bring the rescuer within touch of the pine, where could be
+fastened the guy-rope; the other end would be affixed to the chair which
+could be lowered to the cabin only from the rugged face of the cliff.
+Kennedy harbored no self-deception; he more than doubted the outcome of
+the enterprise. He quaked and turned pale with dread as with the great
+rope knotted about his arm-pits and around his waist he was swung over
+the brink at the point where the crag jutted forth,--lower and lower
+still; now nearing the slanting inverted pine, caught amidst the debris
+of earth and rock; now failing to reach its boughs; once more swinging
+back to a great distance, so did the length of the rope increase the
+scope of the pendulum; now nearing the pine again, and at last fairly
+lodged on the icy bole, knotting and coiling about it the end of the
+guy-rope, on which he had come and on which he must needs return.
+
+It seemed, through the inexpert handling of the little group, a long
+time before the stout arm-chair was secured to the cables, slowly
+lowered, and landed at last on the outside of the hut. Many an anxious
+glance was cast at the slate-gray sky. An inopportune flurry of snow, a
+flaw of wind:--and even now all would be lost. Dusk too impended, and
+as the rope began to coil on the windlass at the signal to hoist every
+eye was strained to discern the identity of the first voyagers in this
+aerial journey,--the two children, securely lashed to the chair. This
+was well,--all felt that both parents might best wait, might risk
+the added delay. The chair came swinging easily, swiftly, along the
+gradations of the rise, the guy-rope holding it well from the chances
+of contact with the jagged projections of the face of the cliff, and the
+first shout of triumph rang sonorously from the summit.
+
+When next the chair rested on the cabin beside the window, a thrill of
+anxiety and anger went through Kennedy's heart to note, from his perch
+on the leaning pine, a struggle between husband and wife as to who
+should go first. Each was eager to take the many risks incident to the
+long wait in this precarious lodgment. The man was the stronger. Aurelia
+was forced into the chair, tied fast, pushed off, waving' her hand to
+her husband, shedding floods of tears, looking at him for the last time,
+as she fancied, and calling out dismally, "Far'well, Basil, far'-well."
+
+Even this lugubrious demonstration could not damp the spirits of the men
+working like mad at the windlass. They were jovial enough for bursts
+of laughter when it became apparent that Basil had utilized the ensuing
+interval to tie together, in preparation for the ascent with himself,
+the two objects which he next most treasured, his violin and his old
+hound. The trusty chair bore all aloft, and Basil was received with
+welcoming acclamations.
+
+Before the rope was wound anew and for the last time, the aspect of
+the group on the cliff had changed. It had grown eerie, indistinct. The
+pines and firs showed no longer their sempervirent green, but were black
+amid the white tufted lines on their branches, that still served to
+accentuate their symmetry. The vale had disappeared in a sinister abyss
+of gloom, though Kennedy would not look down at its menace, but upward,
+always upward. Thus he saw, like some radiant and splendid star, the
+first torch whitely aglow on the brink of the precipice. It opened long
+avenues of light adown the snowy landscape,--soft blue shadows trailed
+after it, like half-descried draperies of elusive hovering beings. Soon
+the torch was duplicated; another and then another began to glow. Now
+several drew together, and like a constellation glimmered crownlike
+on the brow of the night, as he felt the rope stir with the signal to
+hoist.
+
+Upward, always upward, his eyes on that radiant stellular coronal, as
+it shone white and splendid in the snowy night. And now it had lost its
+mystic glamour,--disintegrated by gradual approach he could see the long
+handles of the pine-knots; the red verges of the flame; the blue and
+yellow tones of the focus; the trailing wreaths of dun-tinted smoke that
+rose from them. Then became visible the faces of the men who held them,
+all crowding eagerly to the verge. But it was in a solemn silence
+that he was received; a drear cold darkness, every torch being stuick
+downward into the snow; a frantic haste in unharnessing him from the
+ropes, for he was almost frozen. He was hardly apt enough to interpret
+this as an emotion too deep for words, but now and again, as he was
+disentangled, he felt about his shoulders a furtive hug, and more than
+one pair of the ministering hands must needs pause to wring his own
+hands hard. They practically carried him to a fire that had been built
+in a sheltered place in one of those grottoes of the region, locally
+called "Rock-houses." Its cavernous portal gave upon a dark interior,
+and not until they had turned a corner in a tunnel-like passage was
+revealed an arched space in a rayonnant suffusion of light, the fire
+itself obscured by the figures about it. His eyes were caught first by
+the aspect of a youthful mother with a golden-haired babe on her breast;
+close by showed the head and horns of a cow; the mule was mercifully
+sheltered too, and stood near, munching his fodder; a cluster of
+sheep pressed after the steps of half a dozen men, that somehow in the
+clare-obscure reminded him of the shepherds of old summoned by good
+tidings of great joy.
+
+A sudden figure started up with streaming white hair and patriarchal
+beard.
+
+"Will ye deny ez ye hev hed a sign from the heavens, Jubal Kennedy?" the
+old circuit-rider straitly demanded. "How could ye hev strengthened yer
+heart fur sech a deed onless the grace o' God prevailed mightily
+within ye? Inasmuch as ye hev done it unto one o' the least o' these my
+brethern, ye hev done it unto me."
+
+"That ain't the _kind_ o' sign, parson," Kennedy faltered. "I be lookin'
+fur a meracle in the yearth or in the air, that I kin view or hear."
+
+"The kingdom o' Christ is a spiritual kingdom," said the parson
+solemnly. "The kingdom o' Christ is a _spiritual_ kingdom, an' great are
+the wonders that are wrought therein."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Christmas Miracle, by
+Charles Egbert Craddock     (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
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+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      The Christmas Miracle, by Charles Egbert Craddock
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
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+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
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+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Christmas Miracle, by
+Charles Egbert Craddock     (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Christmas Miracle
+       1911
+
+Author: Charles Egbert Craddock     (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
+Release Date: November 19, 2007 [EBook #23553]
+Last Updated: March 8, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHRISTMAS MIRACLE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      THE CHRISTMAS MIRACLE
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Charles Egbert Craddock <br /> <br /> 1911
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He yearned for a sign from the heavens. Could one intimation be vouchsafed
+      him, how it would confirm his faltering faith! Jubal Kennedy was of the
+      temperament impervious to spiritual subtleties, fain to reach conclusions
+      with the line and rule of mathematical demonstration. Thus, all
+      unreceptive, he looked through the mountain gap, as through some
+      stupendous gateway, on the splendors of autumn; the vast landscape
+      glamorous in a transparent amethystine haze; the foliage of the dense
+      primeval wilderness in the October richness of red and russet; the
+      &ldquo;hunter's moon,&rdquo; a full sphere of illuminated pearl, high in the blue east
+      while yet the dull vermilion sun swung westering above the massive purple
+      heights. He knew how the sap was sinking; that the growths of the year had
+      now failed; presently all would be shrouded in snow, but only to rise
+      again in the reassurance of vernal quickening, to glow anew in the
+      fullness of bloom, to attain eventually the perfection of fruition. And
+      still he was deaf to the reiterated analogy of death, and blind to the
+      immanent obvious prophecy of resurrection and the life to come. His
+      thoughts, as he stood on this jutting crag in Sunrise Gap, were with a
+      recent &ldquo;experience meeting&rdquo; at which he had sought to canvass his
+      spiritual needs. His demand of a sign from the heavens as evidence of the
+      existence of the God of revelation, as assurance of the awakening of
+      divine grace in the human heart, as actual proof that wistful mortality is
+      inherently endowed with immortality, had electrified this symposium.
+      Though it was fashionable, so to speak, in this remote cove among the
+      Great Smoky Mountains, to be repentant in rhetorical involutions and a
+      self-accuser in finespun interpretations of sin, doubt, or more properly
+      an eager questioning, a desire to possess the sacred mysteries of
+      religion, was unprecedented. Kennedy was a proud man, reticent, reserved.
+      Although the old parson, visibly surprised and startled, had gently
+      invited his full confidence, Kennedy had hastily swallowed his words, as
+      best he might, perceiving that the congregation had wholly misinterpreted
+      their true intent and that certain gossips had an unholy relish of the
+      sensation they had caused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thereafter he indulged his poignant longings for the elucidation of the
+      veiled truths only when, as now, he wandered deep in the woods with his
+      rifle on his shoulder. He could not have said to-day that he was nearer an
+      inspiration, a hope, a &ldquo;leading,&rdquo; than heretofore, but as he stood on the
+      crag it was with the effect of a dislocation that he was torn from the
+      solemn theme by an interruption at a vital crisis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The faint vibrations of a violin stirred the reverent hush of the
+      landscape in the blended light of the setting sun and the &ldquo;hunter's moon.&rdquo;
+       Presently the musician came into view, advancing slowly through the aisles
+      of the red autumn forest. A rapt figure it was, swaying in responsive
+      ecstasy with the rhythmic cadence. The head, with its long, blowsy yellow
+      hair, was bowed over the dark polished wood of the instrument; the eyes
+      were half closed; the right arm, despite the eccentric patches on the
+      sleeve of the old brown-jeans coat, moved with free, elastic gestures in
+      all the liberties of a practiced bowing. If he saw the hunter motionless
+      on the brink of the crag, the fiddler gave no intimation. His every
+      faculty was as if enthralled by the swinging iteration of the sweet
+      melancholy melody, rendered with a breadth of effect, an inspiration, it
+      might almost have seemed, incongruous with the infirmities of the crazy
+      old fiddle. He was like a creature under the sway of a spell, and
+      apparently drawn by this dulcet lure of the enchantment of sound was the
+      odd procession that trailed silently after him through these deep mountain
+      fastnesses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A woman came first, arrayed in a ragged purple skirt and a yellow blouse
+      open at the throat, displaying a slender white neck which upheld a face of
+      pensive, inert beauty. She clasped in her arms a delicate infant, ethereal
+      of aspect with its flaxen hair, transparently pallid complexion, and wide
+      blue eyes. It was absolutely quiescent, save that now and then it turned
+      feebly in its waxen hands a little striped red-and-yellow pomegranate. A
+      sturdy blond toddler trudged behind, in a checked blue cotton frock, short
+      enough to disclose cherubic pink feet and legs bare to the knee; he
+      carried that treasure of rural juveniles, a cornstalk violin. An old
+      hound, his tail suavely wagging, padded along the narrow path; and last of
+      all came, with frequent pause to crop the wayside herbage, a large cow,
+      brindled red and white.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The whole fambly!&rdquo; muttered Kennedy. Then, aloud, &ldquo;Why don't you uns
+      kerry the baby, Basil Bedell, an' give yer wife a rest?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the prosaic suggestion the crystal realm of dreams was shattered. The
+      bow, with a quavering discordant scrape upon the strings, paused. Then
+      Bedell slowly mastered the meaning of the interruption.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kerry the baby! Why, Aurely won't let none but herself tech that baby.&rdquo;
+       He laughed as he tossed the tousled yellow hair from his face, and looked
+      over his shoulder to speak to the infant. &ldquo;It air sech a plumb special
+      delightsome peach, it air,&mdash;it air!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The pale face of the child lighted up with a smile of recognition and a
+      faint gleam of mirth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I jes' kem out ennyhows ter drive up the cow,&rdquo; Basil added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Big job,&rdquo; sneered Kennedy. &ldquo;'Pears-like it takes the whole fambly to do
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Such slothful mismanagement was calculated to affront an energetic spirit.
+      Obviously, at this hour the woman should be at home cooking the supper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I follered along ter listen ter the fiddle,&mdash;ef ye hev enny call ter
+      know.&rdquo; Mrs. Bedell replied to his unspoken thought, as if by divination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But indeed such strictures were not heard for the first time. They were in
+      some sort the penalty of the disinterested friendship which Kennedy had
+      harbored for Basil since their childhood. He wished that his compeer might
+      prosper in such simple wise as his own experience had proved to be amply
+      possible. Kennedy's earlier incentive to industry had been his intention
+      to marry, but the object of his affections had found him &ldquo;too mortal
+      solemn,&rdquo; and without a word of warning had married another man in a
+      distant cove. The element of treachery in this event had gone far to
+      reconcile the jilted lover to his future, bereft of her companionship, but
+      the habit of industry thus formed had continued of its own momentum. It
+      had resulted in forehanded thrift; he now possessed a comfortable holding,&mdash;cattle,
+      house, ample land; and he had all the intolerance of the ant for the
+      cricket. As Bedell lifted the bow once more, every wincing nerve was
+      enlisted in arresting it in mid-air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mighty long tramp fur Bobbie, thar,&mdash;why n't ye kerry him!&rdquo; y
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The imperturbable calm still held fast on the musician's face. &ldquo;Bob,&rdquo; he
+      addressed the toddler, &ldquo;will you uns let daddy kerry ye like a baby!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He swooped down as if to lift the child, the violin and bow in his left
+      hand. The hardy youngster backed off precipitately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't ye <i>dare</i> ter do it!&rdquo; he virulently admonished his parent, a
+      resentful light in his blue eyes. Then, as Bedell sang a stave in a full
+      rich voice, &ldquo;Bye-oh, Baby!&rdquo; Bob vociferated anew, &ldquo;Don't you <i>begin</i>
+      ter dare do it!&rdquo; every inch a man though a little one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the kind of a fambly I hev got,&rdquo; Basil commented easily. &ldquo;Wife an'
+      boy an' baby all walk over me,&mdash;plumb stomp on me! Jes' enough lef of
+      me ter play the fiddle a leetle once in a while.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mighty nigh all the while, I be afeared,&rdquo; Kennedy corrected the phrase.
+      &ldquo;How did yer corn crap turn out!&rdquo; he asked, as he too fell into line and
+      the procession moved on once more along the narrow path.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well enough,&rdquo; said Basil; &ldquo;we uns hev got a sufficiency.&rdquo; Then, as if
+      afraid of seeming boastful he qualified, &ldquo;Ye know I hain't got but one
+      muel ter feed, an' the cow thar. My sheep gits thar pastur' on the
+      volunteer grass 'mongst the rocks, an' I hev jes' got a few head
+      ennyhows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But <i>why</i> hain't ye got more, Basil! Why n't ye work more and quit
+      wastin' yer time on that old fool fiddle!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The limits of patience were reached. The musician fired up. &ldquo;'Kase,&rdquo; he
+      retorted, &ldquo;I make enough. I hev got grace enough ter be thankful fur sech
+      ez be vouchsafed ter me. <i>I</i> ain't wantin' no meracle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kennedy flushed, following in silence while the musician annotated his
+      triumph by a series of gay little harmonics, and young Hopeful, trudging
+      in the rear, executed a soundless fantasia on the cornstalk fiddle with
+      great brilliancy of technique.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You uns air talkin' 'bout whut I said at the meetin' las' month,&rdquo; Kennedy
+      observed at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An' so be all the mounting,&rdquo; Aurelia interpolated with a sudden fierce
+      joy of reproof.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kennedy winced visibly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The folks all 'low ez ye be no better than an onbeliever.&rdquo; Aurelia was
+      bent on driving the blade home. &ldquo;The idee of axin' fur a meracle at this
+      late day,&mdash;so ez <i>ye</i> kin be satisfied in yer mind ez ye hev got
+      grace! Providence, though merciful, air <i>obleeged</i>, ter know ez sech
+      air plumb scandalous an' redic'lous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Aurely, hesh up,&rdquo; exclaimed her husband, startled from his wonted
+      leniency. &ldquo;I hev never hearn ye talk in sech a key,&mdash;yer voice sounds
+      plumb out o' tune. I be plumb sorry, Jube, ez I spoke ter you uns 'bout a
+      meracle at all. But I frar consider'ble nettled by yer words, ye see,&mdash;'kase
+      I know I be a powerful, lazy, shif'less cuss&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye know a lie, then,&rdquo; his helpmate interrupted promptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Aurely, hesh up,&mdash;ye&mdash;ye&mdash;<i>woman</i>, ye!&rdquo; he
+      concluded injuriously. Then resuming his remarks to Kennedy, &ldquo;I know I <i>do</i>
+      fool away a deal of my time with the fiddle&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The sound of it is like bread ter me,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I couldn't live without it,&rdquo; interposed the unconquered Aurelia.
+      &ldquo;Sometimes it minds me o' the singin' o' runnin' water in a lonesome
+      place. Then agin it minds me o' seein' sunshine in a dream. An' sometimes
+      it be sweet an' high an' fur off, like a voice from the sky, tellin' what
+      no mortial ever knowed before,&mdash;an' <i>then</i> it minds me o' the
+      tune them angels sung ter the shepherds abidin' in the fields. I <i>couldn't</i>
+      live without it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Woman, hold yer jaw!&rdquo; Basil proclaimed comprehensively. Then, renewing
+      his explanation to Kennedy, &ldquo;I kin see that I don't purvide fur my fambly
+      ez I ought ter do, through hatin' work and lovin' to play the fiddle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ain't goin' ter hear my home an' hearth reviled.&rdquo; Aurelia laid an
+      imperative hand on her husband's arm. &ldquo;Ye know ye couldn 't make more
+      out'n sech ground,&mdash;though I ain't faultin' our land, neither. We uns
+      hev enough an' ter spare, all we need an' more than we deserve. We don't
+      need ter ax a meracle from the skies ter stay our souls on faith, nor a
+      sign ter prove our grace.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, <i>now, stop</i>, Aurely!&mdash;I declar', Jube I dunno what made me
+      lay my tongue ter sech a word ez that thar miser'ble benighted meracle! I
+      be powerful sorry I hurt yer feelin's, Jube; folks seekin' salvation git
+      mightily mis-put sometimes, an'&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>I</i> don't want ter hear none o' yer views on religion,&rdquo; Kennedy
+      interrupted gruffly. An apology often augments the sense of injury. In
+      this instance it also annulled the provocation, for his own admission put
+      Bedell hopelessly in the wrong. &ldquo;Ez a friend I war argufyin' with ye agin'
+      yer waste o' time with that old fool fiddle. Ye hev got wife an' children,
+      an' yit not so well off in this world's gear ez me, a single man. I
+      misdoubts ef ye hev hunted a day since the craps war laid by, or hev got a
+      pound o' jerked venison stored up fer winter. But this air yer home,&rdquo;&mdash;he
+      pointed upward at a little clearing beginning, as they approached, to be
+      visible amidst the forest,&mdash;&ldquo;an' ef ye air satisfied with sech ez it
+      be, that comes from laziness stiddier a contented sperit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With this caustic saying he suddenly left them, the procession standing
+      silently staring after him as he took his way through the woods in the
+      dusky red shadows of the autumnal gloaming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aurelia's vaunted home was indeed a poor place,&mdash;not even the rude
+      though substantial log-cabin common to the region. It was a flimsy shanty
+      of boards, and except for its rickety porch was more like a box than a
+      house. It had its perch on a jutting eminence, where it seemed the
+      familiar of the skies, so did the clouds and winds circle about it.
+      Through the great gateway of Sunrise Gap it commanded a landscape of a
+      scope that might typify a world, in its multitude of mountain ranges, in
+      the intricacies of its intervening valleys, in the glittering coils of its
+      water-courses. Basil would sometimes sink into deep silences, overpowered
+      by the majesty of nature in this place. After a long hiatus the bow would
+      tremble and falter on the strings as if overawed for a time; presently the
+      theme would strengthen, expand, resound with large meaning, and then he
+      would send forth melodies that he had never before played or heard, his
+      own dream, the reflection of that mighty mood of nature in the limpid pool
+      of his receptive mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Around were rocks, crags, chasms,&mdash;the fields which nourished the
+      family lay well from the verge, within the purlieus of the limited
+      mountain plateau. He had sought to persuade himself that it was to save
+      all the arable land for tillage that he had placed his house and door-yard
+      here, but both he and Aurelia were secretly aware of the subterfuge; he
+      would fain be always within the glamour of the prospect through Sunrise
+      Gap!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their interlocutor had truly deemed that the woman should have been
+      earlier at home cooking the supper. Dusk had deepened to darkness long
+      before the meal smoked upon the board. The spinning-wheel had begun to
+      whir for her evening stint when other hill-folks had betaken themselves to
+      bed. Basil puffed his pipe before the fire; the flicker and flare pervaded
+      every nook of the bright little house. Strings of red-pepper-pods flaunted
+      in festoons from the beams; the baby slumbered under a gay quilt in his
+      rude cradle, never far from his mother's hand, but the bluff little boy
+      was still up and about, although his aspect, round and burly, in a scanty
+      nightgown, gave token of recognition of the fact that bed was his
+      appropriate place. His shrill plaintive voice rose ever and anon
+      wakefully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wanter hear a bear tale,&mdash;I wanter hear a bear tale.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus Basil must needs knock the ashes from his pipe the better to devote
+      himself to the narration,&mdash;a prince of raconteurs, to judge by the
+      spell-bound interest of the youngster who stood at his knee and hung on
+      his words. Even Aurelia checked the whir of her wheel to listen smilingly.
+      She broke out laughing in appreciative pleasure when Basil took up the
+      violin to show how a jovial old bear, who intruded into this very house
+      one day when all the family were away at the church in the cove, and who
+      mistook the instrument for a banjo, addressed himself to picking out this
+      tune, singing the while a quaint and ursine lay. Basil embellished the
+      imitation with a masterly effect of realistic growls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ef ye keep goin' at that gait, Basil,&rdquo; Aurelia admonished him, &ldquo;daylight
+      will ketch us all wide awake around the fire,&mdash;no wonder the child
+      won't go to bed.&rdquo; She seemed suddenly impressed with the pervasive cheer.
+      &ldquo;What a fool that man, Jube Kennedy, must be! How <i>could</i> ennybody
+      hev a sweeter, darlinger home than we uns hev got hyar in Sunrise Gap!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On the languorous autumn a fierce winter ensued. The cold came early. The
+      deciduous growths of the forests were leafless ere November waned, rifled
+      by the riotous marauding winds. December set in with the gusty snow flying
+      fast. Drear were the gray skies; ghastly the sheeted ranges. Drifts piled
+      high in bleak ravines, and the grim gneissoid crags were begirt with
+      gigantic icicles. But about the little house in Sunrise Gap that kept so
+      warm a heart, the holly trees showed their glad green leaves and the red
+      berries glowed with a mystic significance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the weeks wore on, the place was often in Kennedy's mind, although he
+      had not seen it since that autumn afternoon when he had bestirred himself
+      to rebuke its owner concerning the inadequacies of the domestic provision.
+      His admonition had been kindly meant and had not deserved the retort, the
+      flippant ridicule of his spiritual yearnings. Though he still winced from
+      the recollection, he was sorry that he had resisted the importunacy of
+      Basil's apology. He realized that Aurelia had persisted to the limit of
+      her power in the embitterment of the controversy, but even Aurelia he was
+      disposed to forgive as time passed on. When Christinas Day dawned, the
+      vague sentiment began to assume the definiteness of a purpose, and
+      noontide found him on his way to Sunrise Gap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was now no path through the woods; the snow lay deep over all,
+      unbroken save at long intervals when queer footprints gave token of the
+      stirring abroad of the sylvan denizens, and he felt an idle interest in
+      distinguishing the steps of wolf and fox, of opossum and weasel. In the
+      intricacies of the forest aisles, amid laden boughs of pine and fir, there
+      was a suggestion of darkness, but all the sky held not enough light to
+      cast the shadow of a bole on the white blank spaces of the snow-covered
+      ground. A vague blue haze clothed the air; yet as he drew near the
+      mountain brink, all was distinct in the vast landscape, the massive ranges
+      and alternating valleys in infinite repetition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He wondered when near the house that he had not heard the familiar barking
+      of the old hound; then he remembered that the sound of his horse's hoofs
+      was muffled by the snow. He was glad to be unheralded. He would like to
+      surprise Aurelia into geniality before her vicarious rancor for Basil's
+      sake should be roused anew. As he emerged from the thick growths of the
+      holly, with the icy scintillations of its clustering green leaves and red
+      berries, he drew rein so suddenly that the horse was thrown back on his
+      haunches. The rider sat as if petrified in the presence of an awful
+      disaster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The house was gone! Even the site had vanished! Kennedy stared bewildered.
+      Slowly the realization of what had chanced here began to creep through his
+      brain. Evidently there had been a gigantic landslide. The cliff-like
+      projection was broken sheer off,&mdash;hurled into the depths of the
+      valley. Some action of subterranean waters, throughout ages, doubtless,
+      had been undermining the great crags till the rocky crust of the earth had
+      collapsed. He could see even now how the freeze had fractured outcropping
+      ledges where the ice had gathered in the fissures. A deep abyss that he
+      remembered as being at a considerable distance from the mountain's brink,
+      once spanned by a foot-bridge, now showed the remnant of its jagged,
+      shattered walls at the extreme verge of the precipice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A cold chill of horror benumbed his senses. Basil, the wife, the children,&mdash;where
+      were they? A terrible death, surely, to be torn from the warm securities
+      of the hearth-stone, without a moment's warning, and hurled into the midst
+      of this frantic turmoil of nature, down to the depths of the gap,&mdash;a
+      thousand feet below! And at what time had this dread fate befallen his
+      friend? He remembered that at the cross-roads' store, when he had paused
+      on his way to warm himself that morning, some gossip was detailing the
+      phenomenon of unseasonable thunder during the previous night, while others
+      protested that it must have been only the clamors of &ldquo;Christmas guns&rdquo;
+       firing all along the country-side. &ldquo;A turrible clap, it was,&rdquo; the
+      raconteur had persisted. &ldquo;Sounded ez ef all creation hed split apart.&rdquo;
+       Perhaps, therefore, the catastrophe might be recent. Kennedy could
+      scarcely command his muscles as he dismounted and made his way slowly and
+      cautiously to the verge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Any deviation from the accustomed routine of nature has an unnerving
+      effect, unparalleled by disaster in other sort; no individual danger or
+      doom, the aspect of death by drowning, or gunshot, or disease, can so
+      abash the reason and stultify normal expectation. Kennedy was scarcely
+      conscious that he saw the vast disorder of the landslide, scattered from
+      the precipice on the mountain's brink to the depths of the Gap&mdash;inverted
+      roots of great pines thrust out in mid-air, foundations of crags riven
+      asunder and hurled in monstrous fragments along the steep slant, unknown
+      streams newly liberated from the caverns of the range and cascading from
+      the crevices of the rocks. In effect he could not believe his own eyes.
+      His mind realized the perception of his senses only when his heart
+      suddenly plunged with a wild hope,&mdash;he had discerned amongst the
+      turmoil a shape of line and rule, the little box-like hut! Caught as it
+      was in the boughs of a cluster of pines and firs, uprooted and thrust out
+      at an incline a little less than vertical, the inmates might have been
+      spared such shock of the fall as would otherwise have proved fatal. Had
+      the house been one of the substantial log-cabins of the region its timbers
+      must have been torn one from another, the daubing and chinking scattered
+      as mere atoms. But the more flimsy character of the little dwelling had
+      thus far served to save it,&mdash;the interdependent &ldquo;framing&rdquo; of its
+      structure held fast; the upright studding and boards, nailed stoutly on,
+      rendered it indeed the box that it looked. It was, so to speak, built in
+      one piece, and no part was subjected to greater strain than another. But
+      should the earth cave anew, should the tough fibres of one of those
+      gigantic roots tear out from the loosened friable soil, should the elastic
+      supporting branches barely sway in some errant gust of wind, the little
+      box would fall hundreds of feet, cracked like a nut, shattering against
+      the rocks of the levels below.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He wondered if the inmates yet lived,&mdash;he pitied them still more if
+      they only existed to realize their peril, to await in an anguish of fear
+      their ultimate doom. Perhaps&mdash;he felt he was but trifling with
+      despair&mdash;some rescue might be devised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such a weird cry he set up on the brink of the mountain!&mdash;full of
+      horror, grief, and that poignant hope. The echoes of the Gap seemed
+      reluctant to repeat the tones, dull, slow, muffled in snow. But a sturdy
+      halloo responded from the window, uppermost now, for the house lay on its
+      side amongst the boughs. Kennedy thought he saw the pallid simulacrum of a
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This be Jube Kennedy,&rdquo; he cried, reassuringly. &ldquo;I be goin' ter fetch
+      help,&mdash;men, ropes, and a windlass.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Make haste then,&mdash;we uns be nigh friz.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye air in no danger of fire, then?&rdquo; asked the practical man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We hev hed none,&mdash;before we war flunged off'n the bluff we hed
+      squinched the fire ter pledjure Bob, ez he war afeard Santy Claus would
+      scorch his feet comm' down the chimbley,&mdash;powerful lucky fur we uns;
+      the fire would hev burnt the house bodaciously.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Kennedy hardly stayed to hear. He was off in a moment, galloping at
+      frantic speed along the snowy trail scarcely traceable in the sad light of
+      the gray day; taking short cuts through the densities of the laurel; torn
+      by jagged rocks and tangles of thorny growths and broken branches of great
+      trees; plunging now and again into deep drifts above concealed icy chasms,
+      and rescuing with inexpressible difficulty the floundering, struggling
+      horse; reaching again the open sheeted roadway, bruised, bleeding,
+      exhausted, yet furiously plunging forward, rousing the sparsely settled
+      country-side with imperative insistence for help in this matter of life or
+      death!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Death, indeed, only,&mdash;for the enterprise was pronounced impossible by
+      those more experienced than Kennedy. Among the men now on the bluff were
+      several who had been employed in the silver mines of this region, and they
+      demonstrated conclusively that a rope could not be worked clear of the
+      obstructions of the face of the rugged and shattered cliffs; that a human
+      being, drawn from the cabin, strapped in a chair, must needs be torn from
+      it and flung into the abyss below, or beaten to a frightful death against
+      the jagged rocks in the transit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But not ef the chair war ter be steadied by a guy-rope from&mdash;say&mdash;from
+      that thar old pine tree over thar,&rdquo; Kennedy insisted, indicating the long
+      bole of a partially uprooted and inverted tree on the steeps. &ldquo;The chair
+      would swing cl'ar of the bluff then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Jube, it is onpossible ter git a guy-rope over ter that tree,&mdash;more
+      than a man's life is wuth ter try it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A moment ensued of absolute silence,&mdash;space, however, for a
+      hard-fought battle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The aspect of that mad world below, with every condition of creation
+      reversed; a mistake in the adjustment of the winch and gear by the
+      excited, reluctant, disapproving men; an overstrain on the fibres of the
+      long-used rope; a slip on the treacherous ice; the dizzy whirl of the
+      senses that even a glance downward at those drear depths set astir in the
+      brain,&mdash;all were canvassed within his mental processes, all were duly
+      realized in their entirety ere he said with a spare dull voice and dry
+      lips,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fix ter let me down ter that thar leanin' pine, boys,&mdash;I'll kerry a
+      guy-rope over thar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At one side the crag beetled, and although it was impossible thence to
+      reach the cabin with a rope it would swing clear of obstructions here, and
+      might bring the rescuer within touch of the pine, where could be fastened
+      the guy-rope; the other end would be affixed to the chair which could be
+      lowered to the cabin only from the rugged face of the cliff. Kennedy
+      harbored no self-deception; he more than doubted the outcome of the
+      enterprise. He quaked and turned pale with dread as with the great rope
+      knotted about his arm-pits and around his waist he was swung over the
+      brink at the point where the crag jutted forth,&mdash;lower and lower
+      still; now nearing the slanting inverted pine, caught amidst the débris of
+      earth and rock; now failing to reach its boughs; once more swinging back
+      to a great distance, so did the length of the rope increase the scope of
+      the pendulum; now nearing the pine again, and at last fairly lodged on the
+      icy bole, knotting and coiling about it the end of the guy-rope, on which
+      he had come and on which he must needs return.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed, through the inexpert handling of the little group, a long time
+      before the stout arm-chair was secured to the cables, slowly lowered, and
+      landed at last on the outside of the hut. Many an anxious glance was cast
+      at the slate-gray sky. An inopportune flurry of snow, a flaw of wind:&mdash;and
+      even now all would be lost. Dusk too impended, and as the rope began to
+      coil on the windlass at the signal to hoist every eye was strained to
+      discern the identity of the first voyagers in this aerial journey,&mdash;the
+      two children, securely lashed to the chair. This was well,&mdash;all felt
+      that both parents might best wait, might risk the added delay. The chair
+      came swinging easily, swiftly, along the gradations of the rise, the
+      guy-rope holding it well from the chances of contact with the jagged
+      projections of the face of the cliff, and the first shout of triumph rang
+      sonorously from the summit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When next the chair rested on the cabin beside the window, a thrill of
+      anxiety and anger went through Kennedy's heart to note, from his perch on
+      the leaning pine, a struggle between husband and wife as to who should go
+      first. Each was eager to take the many risks incident to the long wait in
+      this precarious lodgment. The man was the stronger. Aurelia was forced
+      into the chair, tied fast, pushed off, waving' her hand to her husband,
+      shedding floods of tears, looking at him for the last time, as she
+      fancied, and calling out dismally, &ldquo;Far'well, Basil, far'-well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Even this lugubrious demonstration could not damp the spirits of the men
+      working like mad at the windlass. They were jovial enough for bursts of
+      laughter when it became apparent that Basil had utilized the ensuing
+      interval to tie together, in preparation for the ascent with himself, the
+      two objects which he next most treasured, his violin and his old hound.
+      The trusty chair bore all aloft, and Basil was received with welcoming
+      acclamations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before the rope was wound anew and for the last time, the aspect of the
+      group on the cliff had changed. It had grown eerie, indistinct. The pines
+      and firs showed no longer their sempervirent green, but were black amid
+      the white tufted lines on their branches, that still served to accentuate
+      their symmetry. The vale had disappeared in a sinister abyss of gloom,
+      though Kennedy would not look down at its menace, but upward, always
+      upward. Thus he saw, like some radiant and splendid star, the first torch
+      whitely aglow on the brink of the precipice. It opened long avenues of
+      light adown the snowy landscape,&mdash;soft blue shadows trailed after it,
+      like half-descried draperies of elusive hovering beings. Soon the torch
+      was duplicated; another and then another began to glow. Now several drew
+      together, and like a constellation glimmered crownlike on the brow of the
+      night, as he felt the rope stir with the signal to hoist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upward, always upward, his eyes on that radiant stellular coronal, as it
+      shone white and splendid in the snowy night. And now it had lost its
+      mystic glamour,&mdash;disintegrated by gradual approach he could see the
+      long handles of the pine-knots; the red verges of the flame; the blue and
+      yellow tones of the focus; the trailing wreaths of dun-tinted smoke that
+      rose from them. Then became visible the faces of the men who held them,
+      all crowding eagerly to the verge. But it was in a solemn silence that he
+      was received; a drear cold darkness, every torch being stuick downward
+      into the snow; a frantic haste in unharnessing him from the ropes, for he
+      was almost frozen. He was hardly apt enough to interpret this as an
+      emotion too deep for words, but now and again, as he was disentangled, he
+      felt about his shoulders a furtive hug, and more than one pair of the
+      ministering hands must needs pause to wring his own hands hard. They
+      practically carried him to a fire that had been built in a sheltered place
+      in one of those grottoes of the region, locally called &ldquo;Rock-houses.&rdquo; Its
+      cavernous portal gave upon a dark interior, and not until they had turned
+      a corner in a tunnel-like passage was revealed an arched space in a
+      rayonnant suffusion of light, the fire itself obscured by the figures
+      about it. His eyes were caught first by the aspect of a youthful mother
+      with a golden-haired babe on her breast; close by showed the head and
+      horns of a cow; the mule was mercifully sheltered too, and stood near,
+      munching his fodder; a cluster of sheep pressed after the steps of half a
+      dozen men, that somehow in the clare-obscure reminded him of the shepherds
+      of old summoned by good tidings of great joy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A sudden figure started up with streaming white hair and patriarchal
+      beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will ye deny ez ye hev hed a sign from the heavens, Jubal Kennedy?&rdquo; the
+      old circuit-rider straitly demanded. &ldquo;How could ye hev strengthened yer
+      heart fur sech a deed onless the grace o' God prevailed mightily within
+      ye? Inasmuch as ye hev done it unto one o' the least o' these my brethern,
+      ye hev done it unto me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That ain't the <i>kind</i> o' sign, parson,&rdquo; Kennedy faltered. &ldquo;I be
+      lookin' fur a meracle in the yearth or in the air, that I kin view or
+      hear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The kingdom o' Christ is a spiritual kingdom,&rdquo; said the parson solemnly.
+      &ldquo;The kingdom o' Christ is a <i>spiritual</i> kingdom, an' great are the
+      wonders that are wrought therein.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
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