BY OLIVE TILFORD DARGAN HIGHLAND ANNALS LUTE AND FURROW THE MORTAL GODS AND OTHER PLAYS LORDS AND LOVERS AND OTHER DRAMAS THE CYCLE’S RIM THE PATH FLOWER AND OTHER VERSE With Frederic Peterson THE FLUTTER OF THE GOLD LEAF AND OTHER PLAYS CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS HIGHLAND ANNALS HIGHLAND ANNALS _By_ OLIVE TILFORD DARGAN NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 1925 _The first six of these sketches were published in_ THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY. _Number seven appeared in_ THE REVIEWER. _The author thanks the editors of these magazines for permission to reprint._ COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS COPYRIGHT, 1919, 1924, BY THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY COPYRIGHT, APRIL, 1925, BY THE REVIEWER Printed in the United States of America [Illustration] CONTENTS PAGE I. _About Granpap and Trees_ 3 II. _Coretta and Autumn_ 24 III. _Serena and Wild Strawberries_ 54 IV. _Sam_ 76 V. _Evvie: Somewhat Married_ 107 VI. _My Wild-Hog Claim: A Dubious Asset_ 138 VII. _Serena Takes a Boarder_ 180 VIII. _A Proper Funeral_ 229 HIGHLAND ANNALS I ABOUT GRANPAP AND TREES I Granpap accrued to me along with a farm in the Unakas. When I learned that my inheritance lay, or rather rose, in the Unakas, it at once passed from prose to poetry. My hundred hills became tipped with song, bloom calling to bloom from Three Pine Point to Sunrise Spur, and Blackcap answering from his hemlock shroud with a melodious shake that did no harm to his hidden acres of anemone and trillium. The laurel, polished as by the glance of a god, drew a richer green from its storehouse across a paltry breadth of sky, in the sun. The great chestnuts leafily defied the blight that was creeping to their hearts. And where the gray rocks pushed through the living emerald of the mountain walls, they too seemed listeningly alive, as if in wait for the key-word that would swing them open on Persia magnificent; though they needed to borrow no glamour of age from any part of the world. Unakas! Spenser, under English beeches, rustled his threefold coverlet of centuries, and began another dream--dream of a region that was old to God before Helvellyn rose or the Himalayas shone as the planet’s crest.