The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1897-09-10
A LITTLE .~.
MOUNTAIN MAID. Y
THE great mountains peered over
.....BY MARY TRACY EARLE

one another's shoulders and
watched Georgia Blount at her play.
Bald Top, Crabs Claw and Old Surly
stood nearest; sometimes they seemed
so near that Georgia could talk to
them; and when a low-hanging cloud
shut them out of sight, or the blue au-
tumn haze yelled them softly and held
them aloof from her, she felt as other
children feel when their friends turn
away or refuse to tell what the thoughts
are in their eyes.
! A gnarled tree grew at the foot of
| the bluff which lifted the big dome of
Copper Head above the mountain side.
and between the roots of this tree
Georgia had her play house. Day in
and day out no one ever came in sight
of it except the mountains, but Georgia
was never lonely. In the mornings she
| had 10 take all her dolls out of their
beds of moss and dress them in fresh
gowns of summer or autumn leaves, or
in stiff, fringy costumes of pine needles.
She was very much in earnest about her
dolls and yet she sometimes claPped her
hands and laughed when they were
dressed and leaning in long row
| against one of the roots, they made such
an elfin company. Some of them had
| nuts for heads and some of them had
| acorns. Some of them had been made
out of dry. rounded rcceptacles of
| composite flower from which the fiorets
| had fallen and the winged seeds flown
away, leaving only the circle of bracts
for nd N t7.ift1 10 cto will txx0
| branches, from which the flower ends
| had been nipped off, for arms. These
were the most fragile of Georgia's chill
| 1ren, and it took a most sllillful hand
| to keep their toilets without swapping
their necks, or their bodies or their
| limbs. Georgia could do it, for she
loved them. and she had been dressing
them ever since she was big enough to
wander off by herself up the mountain
side, and through the forest which sep
arated the home clearing from the rug
ged, bowlder-strewn slope below the
| playhouse tree and the rock walls of
the dome.
| Georgia was much bigger now than
when she had begun to fashion dolls
for herself with chubby, awkward fin
gers; she was SO much bigger, indeed,
that she was IA years old; she might
have thought that she was growing up
if there had been anyone to suggest it
to her; but she had seen no other chill
dren growing up, and the mountains
did not tell her, for they themselves
had taken SO long TO grow that it never
occurred to them that she would not
continue to be little girl for centuries
and centuries to come. She had work
to do at home now, and that was an in
terruption; yet every day, before or
after work, she managed to slip off to-
ward the forest path.
Among her dolls there was one made
of corncob, and far larger than the
others, and this one Georgia dressed rs
a man. He was a very wicked looking
doll, having deep black eyes and nose
and mouth which she had burned into
his head with hot iron nail; and it was
because he was so different from the
rest that she had named him "the fur
eigner," after the way of southern
mountain people in speaking of any
stranger who comes among them. The
fureigner" lived in corner all by him
self at the back of the tree, and Georgia
always knew that when be came out
among the others there was mischief
brewing. Sometimes she walked slowly
away from the tree gathering leaves and
grasses as she went, and then, as soon
as she could slip away from herself,
hurried stealthily back, pulled the for
eigncr out of his corner. dropped him
among the other dolls, and ran to her
leaf-gatherng again. so that she might
be surprised when she finally returned
and found how he had been romping
up and down among her mountain peo-
pie. "Oh, happy kingdom!" she always
cried when she caught sight of him, ''he
have come agin, and oh, how he do have
been a-layin' waste the land!"
One day, as she stood with her hands
held up in horror at a row of mountain
people who had fallen PROSTATE round
the savage foreigner. real stranger
came out from the thick forest and
stood at the edge of the natural open
ing around the playhouse tree. He
saw her at once, bare-footed, red
checked, with her figured bandana
knotted at her throat, and he could
hear her speak: but she, who should
have been as quick-eared as rabbit,
being just as shy, was too intent to no.
tice the stirring of his feet in the
sparse, dry autumn grass.
"Folkses! folkses!" she cried out,
ives obleeged to run him off the
mounting! He's foreigner, an he
ain't got no right hyar We's obleeged
to run him off the mounting"
The man who listened drew little
closer, trying not to make noise. He
knew that he himself was "fureign-
err" and he wanted to hear whatever the
girl might say; but he laughed right
out when he saw that she was pointing
at corn-cob doll Georgia jumped,
gave single glance over her shoulder
and ran. 1t was one thing to plan raids
on an intruder whom she had dropped
into the playhouse behind her own
back, but this-this was another thing
Only little way from the tree there
was crevice in the bluff which rose be-
hind it. Georgia knew that it wound
for long way between detached rock
and the main bluff. and she slipped into
it with such n sense of protection that
she stopped moment to wonder if she
bad been cowardly to leave her noun
tain people to the two foreigners. and
to listen if anything was going on.
What she heard was the stranger talk