THE LITTLE SHEPHERDOF KINGDOM COME 

 

 by 

 JOHN FOX, JR. 

 

   To CURRIE DUKE DAUGHTER OF THE CHIEF AMONG MORGAN'S MEN KENTUCKY, APRIL, 1898 

 

 CONTENTS 

 

 THE LITTLE SHEPHERD OF KINGDOM COME 

 

 

 CHAPTER 1 

 TWO RUNAWAYS FROM LONESOME 

 The days of that April had been days of mist and rain. Sometimes, for hours, there would come a miracle of blue sky, white cloud, and yellow light, but always between dark and dark the rain would fall and the mist creep up the mountains and steam from the tops—only to roll together from either range, drip back into the valleys, and lift, straightway, as mist again. So that, all the while Nature was trying to give lustier life to every living thing in the lowland Bluegrass, all the while a gaunt skeleton was stalking down the Cumberland—tapping with fleshless knuckles, now at some unlovely cottage of faded white and green, and now at a log cabin, stark and gray. Passing the mouth of Lonesome, he flashed his scythe into its unlifting shadows and went stalking on. High up, at the source of the dismal little stream, the point of the shining blade darted thrice into the open door of a cabin set deep into a shaggy flank of Black Mountain, and three spirits, within, were quickly loosed from aching flesh for the long flight into the unknown. 

 It was the spirit of the plague that passed, taking with it 

  P 1/217 next