OLDFIELD

A KENTUCKY TALE OF THE LAST CENTURY

BY NANCY HUSTON BANKS

New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.
1902

All rights reserved

Copyright, 1902,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped May, 1902.

Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith
Norwood Mass. U.S.A.

To My Father

CONTENTS

I. The Little Sisters
II. The Oldfield People
III. Phases of Village Life
IV. The Child of Miss Judy's Heart
V. An Unconscious Philosopher
VI. Lynn Gordon
VII. The Doctor's Dilemma
VIII. At Old Lady Gordon's
IX. A Romantic Region
X. Religion in Oldfield
XI. Body or Soul
XII. Miss Judy's Little Ways
XIII. The Dancing Lesson
XIV. Making Peace
XV. Sidney does Her Duty
XVI. The Shock and the Fright
XVII. Love's Awakening
XVIII. An Embarrassing Accident
XIX. Invoking the Law
XX. The Conflict between Faith and Love
XXI. What Oldfield thought and said
XXII. The Upas Tree
XXIII. The Beginning of the End
XXIV. Old Lady Gordon's Anger
XXV. The Revelation of the Truth
XXVI. The Tragedy
XXVII. The Last Artfulness of Miss Judy

OLDFIELD

I

THE LITTLE SISTERS

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 far across the faded carpet reached the high bed, and awakened Miss Judy earlier than usual on that bright March morning, in the Pennyroyal Region of Kentucky, a half century ago.

Miss Judy was always awake early, and usually arose while her sister lay still fast asleep on the other side of the big bed. She had learned, however, to creep so softly from beneath the covers, and to climb so quietly down the bed's steep incline, that Miss Sophia was hardly ever in the least disturbed. Moreover, Miss Judy always kept a split-bottomed chair standing near her pillow at night. This served not only as a stand for the candlestick and matches,—so that the candle need not be blown out before Miss Sophia was comfortably cuddled down and Miss Judy was in bed,—but it also furnished a dignified and comparatively easy means of ascending the bed's heights. On descending, Miss Judy had but to step decorously from the mound of feathers to the chair and to drop delicately from the chair to the floor.

To have seen Miss Judy doing this must have been a sight well worth seeing. She was so very pretty, so small, so slight, so exquisite altogether. Old as she was, she had still the movements of a bird. Her sweet old face was as fair as any girl's, and as ready with its delicate blushes. Her soft hair, white as falling snowflakes and as curly as a child's, was burnished by a silver gloss lovelier than the sheen of youth. And her beautiful eyes were still the blue of the flax flowers.

Lifting her shining, curly head on that sunny morning, Miss Judy cast a