Oldfield: A Kentucky Tale of the Last Century

The birds, too, were lilting gayly on that perfect May morning. A couple of flycatchers were breakfasting in mid-air. It is impossible to conceive of a daintier way to satisfy h...

The long, warm days are then of the rarest gold, and the short, cool nights are of the purest silver. The ripened grain has been garnered, and its golden sheaves no longer tent...

"Did you remember to ask Mrs. Gordon about Mr. Beauchamp?" Miss Judy now inquired, adroitly bending Sidney's thoughts toward a delightful subject in which they were both deeply...

He was keenly disappointed, and stood for a moment undecided what to do or which way to go, until the doctor and his wife spoke to him. They were almost the last of the home-goi...

And the young man and the young maid also went the way of all innocent healthy young creatures in ripening summer, thinking little more of the titanic forces moving the world, t...

It was revealed to him at the trial which acquitted him, that the man whom he thus had been compelled to kill had been driven--ay, even hounded--by public opinion into seeking t...

"The folks who think all hens are alike except the difference that the feathers make outside, don't know what they are talking about!" Miss Pettus once said, in her excited way....

Nothing could have been more like her, more entirely characteristic of her whole life, than that this question, which would have been the first with many, should have been the l...

"I happened to be raising the window of Father Mills's room,--he likes it down at night no matter how hot it is, and wants it raised and lowered all through the day,--and I saw...

Only Lynn Gordon and the doctor knew the truth. Lynn had not told his grandmother of Anne's visit nor of her request. His grandmother was not one to whom he would have spoken of...

Miss Judy gave an involuntary sigh of relief when both the pig and the kitten had disappeared without leaving a crumb. She instinctively turned toward Miss Sophia with a pardona...

Mrs. Alexander said nothing more in opposition; she merely looked her thoughts. When, therefore, it was arranged, as the young man was leaving, that he should come on the follow...

But the judge cared nothing for all this unwonted turmoil, beyond the safe, swift passage of the messenger bearing his letter. He did not know that Miss Judy was too ill to read...

When the young man had shown himself to be as much surprised and impressed as she thought he should be, Miss Judy went on with growing confidence. She called his further attenti...

She had not much to tell of the bridegroom with whom she came as a young bride to live in Oldfield; she spoke mainly of journeying on horseback over the Wilderness Road, and of...

"Pardon me," he said icily, moving still farther, still nearer the open door. "It is you who do not understand. There certainly is nothing that any one else can possibly have mi...

"And so he does, when he doesn't happen to want her to stay at home," said old lady Gordon, with a cynical laugh. "But I've never known a husband pious enough to like his wife's...

The old white curtain was slightly too short. Its quaint border of little cotton snowballs swung clear of the window ledge, letting in the sunbeams. The flood of light streaming...

She went straight across to the doctor's house, and, calling its mistress to the gate, asked in a low voice if she would be so neighborly as to keep Billy and Kate until bedtime...

Miss Judy's thoughts, however, were too full of Doris and the dancing-lesson and the events of the previous day to talk long about anything else. She accordingly told Sidney the...

Then came the accident, striking down the strong man at the height of his powers, as the lightning blasts the mighty oak in full leaf. Stunned at first, Anne, rallying, felt the...

Sidney took off her sunbonnet and hung it on the fence, and let her hair loose and twisted it up again, while having her laugh out before going in the house. There was not a gra...

No one ever knew whether the daughters were told the whole sad truth: that this gallant old soldier of the Revolution, who had done much for the winning of Independence, had die...

Accordingly Miss Judy was delicately careful to keep away from the bower, for fear of disturbing Merica's reflections. Eunice had never approached it nor even suspected its exis...

The white mysteries of the wash-kettle were by this time thickly veiled by a snowy cloud of steam. Its contents, boiling furiously, lifted big bubbles dangerously close to the d...

In response to the call Kitty Mills started to run across the big road as she had sped many times that day, and in so doing she encountered Miss Pettus, who had gone home and wa...