Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 13933-h.htm or 13933-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/3/9/3/13933/13933-h/13933-h.htm) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/3/9/3/13933/13933-h.zip) IN OLD KENTUCKY A Story of the Bluegrass and the Mountains Founded on Charles T. Dazey's Play by EDWARD MARSHALL and CHARLES T. DAZEY Illustrations By CLARENCE ROWE 1910 [Illustration: SHE SAW THE STRANGER BREAK THROUGH THE UNDERGROWTH ABOUT THE POOL.] ILLUSTRATIONS. She saw the stranger break through the undergrowth about the pool. (Frontispiece) A mighty leap had carried them beyond the blazing barrier. "No man can cross this bridge, unless--unless--" "Back! back! I'm a-comin' with Queen Bess!" "I'm standin' face to face with my own father's murderer--Lem Lindsay." CHAPTER I. She was coming, singing, down the side of Nebo Mountain--"Old Nebo"--mounted on an ox. Sun-kissed and rich her coloring; her flowing hair was like spun light; her arms, bare to the elbows and above, might have been the models to drive a sculptor to despair, as their muscles played like pulsing liquid beneath the tinted, velvet skin of wrists and forearms; her short skirt bared her shapely legs above the ankles half-way to the knees; her feet, never pinched by shoes and now quite bare, slender, graceful, patrician in their modelling, in strong contrast to the linsey-woolsey of her gown and rough surroundings, were as dainty as a dancing girl's in ancient Athens. The ox, less stolid than is common with his kind, doubtless because of ease of life, swung down the rocky path at a good gait, now and then swaying his head from side to side to nip the tender shoots of freshly leaving laurel. She sang: "Woodpecker pecked as a woodpecker will, Jim thought 'twas a knock on the door of the still, He grabbed up his gun, and he went for to see, The woodpecker laughed as he said: 'Jest me!'"