EVERED
EVERED
BY
BEN AMES WILLIAMS
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
681 Fifth Avenue
Copyright, 1921,
By E. P. Dutton & Company
All Rights Reserved
PRINTED IN THE UNITED
STATES OF AMERICA
{1}
EVERED
Chapter: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX.
I
THERE is romance in the very look of the land of which I write. Beautybeyond belief, of a sort to make your breath come more quickly; anddrama—comedy or tragedy according to the eye and the mood of the seer.Loneliness and comradeship, peace and conflict, friendship and enmity,gayety and somberness, laughter and tears. The bold hills, littlecousins to the mountains, crowd close round each village; the clearbrooks thread wood and meadow; the birches and scrub hardwood are takingback the abandoned farms. When the sun drops low in the west there is astrange and moving purple tinge upon the slopes; and the shadows are asblue as blue can be. When the sun is high there is a greenery about thisnorthern land which is almost tropical in its richness and variety.
The little villages lie for the most part in{2} sheltered valley spots.Not all of them. Liberty, for example, climbs up along a steep hill roadon your way to St. George’s Pond, or over the Sheepscot Ridge, fortrout. No spot lovelier anywhere. But you will come upon other littlehouse clusters, a white church steeple topping every one, at unsuspectedcrossroads, with some meadowland round and about, and a brook runningthrough the village itself, and perhaps a mill sprawled busily acrossthe brook. It is natural that the villages should thus seek shelter; forwhen the winter snows come down this is a harsh land, and bitter cold.So is it all the more strange that the outlying farms are so often sethigh upon the hills, bare to the bleak gales. And the roads, too, liketo seek and keep the heights. From Fraternity itself, for example, thereis a ten-mile ridge southwest to Union, and a road along the wholelength of the ridge’s crest, from which you may look for miles on eitherside.
This is not a land of bold emprises; neither is it one of thoselocalities which are said to be happy because they have no history.There is history in the very names of the villages hereabouts. Liberty,and Union, and Freedom; Equality, and Fraternity. And men will tell{3} youhow their fathers’ fathers came here in the train of General Knox, whenthat warrior, for Revolutionary services rendered, was given title to