Produced by David Edwards, Val Wooff and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive.) THE STORM CENTRE _A NOVEL_ BY CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK AUTHOR OF "THE STORY OF OLD FORT LOUDON," "A SPECTRE OF POWER," "IN THE STRANGER-PEOPLE'S COUNTRY," "THE PROPHET OF THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS," "WHERE THE BATTLE WAS FOUGHT," ETC. New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. 1905 COPYRIGHT, 1905, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published June, 1905. Norwood Press J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. THE STORM CENTRE CHAPTER I The place reminded him then and later of the storm centre of a cyclone. Outside the tempests of Civil War raged. He could hear, as he sat in the quiet, book-lined room, the turbulent drums fitfully beating in tented camps far down the Tennessee River. Through the broad, old-fashioned window he saw the purple hills opposite begin to glow with a myriad of golden gleams, pulsing like fireflies, that told of thousands of troops in bivouac. He read the mystic message of the signal lights, shining with a different lustre, moving athwart the eminence, then back again, expunged in blackness as a fort across the river flashed out an answer. A military band was playing at headquarters, down in the night-begloomed town, and now and again the great blare of the brasses came widely surging on the raw vernal gusts. In the shadowy grove in front of this suburban home his own battery of horse-artillery was parked. It had earlier made its way over many an obstacle, and, oddly enough, through its agency he was recently enabled to penetrate the exclusive reserve of this Southern household, always hitherto coldly aloof and averse to the invader.