_BOOKS BY_ “Charles Egbert Craddock.” (MARY N. MURFREE.) IN THE TENNESSEE MOUNTAINS. Short Stories. 16mo, $1.25. DOWN THE RAVINE. Illustrated. 16mo, $1.00. THE PROPHET OF THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS. A Novel. 16mo, $1.25. IN THE CLOUDS. A Novel. 16mo, $1.25. THE STORY OF KEEDON BLUFFS. 16mo, $1.00. THE DESPOT OF BROOMSEDGE COVE. A Novel. 16mo, $1.25. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. BOSTON AND NEW YORK. THE DESPOT OF BROOMSEDGE COVE BY CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK AUTHOR OF “IN THE CLOUDS,” “DOWN THE RAVINE,” “IN THE TENNESSEE MOUNTAINS,” “THE PROPHET OF THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS,” ETC. [Illustration] BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY The Riverside Press, Cambridge 1889 Copyright, 1888, BY MARY N. MURFREE _All rights reserved._ _The Riverside Press, Cambridge_: Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. THE DESPOT OF BROOMSEDGE COVE. I. On a certain steep and savage slope of the Great Smoky Mountains, the primeval wilderness for many miles is unbroken save by one meagre clearing. The presence of humanity upon the earth is further attested only by a log cabin, high on the rugged slant. At night the stars seem hardly more aloof than the valley below. By day the mountains assert their solemn vicinage, an austere company. The clouds that silently commune with the great peaks, the sinister and scathing deeds of the lightnings, the passionate rhetoric of the thunders, the triumphal pageantry of the sunset-tides, and the wistful yearnings of the dawn aspiring to the day,—these might seem the only incidents of this lonely and exalted life. So august is this mountain scheme that it fills all the visible world with its massive multitudinous presence; still stretching out into the dim blue distances an infinite perspective of peak and range and lateral spur, till one may hardly believe that the fancy does not juggle with the fact.