Produced by Al Haines. *IN BEAVER COVE* AND ELSEWHERE BY MATT CRIM New York CHARLES L. WEBSTER & CO. 1892 Copyright, 1892, CHARLES L. WEBSTER & CO. (_All rights reserved._) PRESS OF JENKINS & McCOWAN, NEW YORK. TO Father and Mother. *CONTENTS.* In Beaver Cove S’phiry Ann An "Onfortunit Creetur" Bet Crow Silury ’Zeki’l Was It an Exceptional Case? An Old-Time Love Story How the Quarrel Ended The Crucial Test The Story of a Lilac Gown *IN BEAVER COVE and ELSEWHERE.* *IN BEAVER COVE.* They were having a dance over in Beaver Cove, at the Woods’. All the young people of the settlement were there, and many from adjoining settlements. The main room of the cabin had been almost cleared of its meager furniture, and the pine-plank floor creaked under the tread of shuffling feet, while dust and lamp-smoke made the atmosphere thick and close. But little did the dancers care for that. Bill Eldridge sat by the hearth, playing his fiddle with tireless energy, while a boy added the thumping of two straws to the much-tried fiddle-strings. A party of shy girls huddled in a corner of the room, and the bashful boys hung about the door, and talked loudly. "Hey, there! git yer partners!" Bill cried to them tauntingly from time to time. Armindy Hudgins and Elisha Cole were pre-eminently the leaders in the party. They danced together again and again; they sat on the bench in the dooryard; they walked to the spring for a fresh draught of water. Armindy was the coquette of the settlement. In beauty, in spirit, and in daring, no other girl in Beaver Cove could compare with her. She could plow all day and dance half the night without losing her peachy bloom, and it was generally admitted that she could take her choice of the marriageable young men of the settlement. But she laughed at all of them by turns, until her lovers dwindled down to two—Elisha Cole and Ephraim Hurd. They were both desperately in earnest, and their rivalry had almost broken their lifelong friendship. She favored first one and then the other, but to-night she showed such decided preference for Cole that Hurd felt hatred filling his heart. He did not dance at all, but hung about the door, or walked moodily up and down the yard, savage with jealousy. Armindy cast many mocking glances at him, but seemed to feel no pity for his suffering.