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A Cumberland Vendetta by John Fox
page 48 of 85 (56%)

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IT was court-day in Hazlan, but so early in the morning nothing
was astir in the town that hinted of its life on such a day. But for
the ring of a blacksmith's anvil on the quiet air, and the fact that
nowhere was a church-spire visible, a stranger would have thought
that the peace of Sabbath overlay a village of God-fearing people.
A burly figure lounged in the porch of a rickety house, and yawned
under a swinging sign, the rude letters of which promised" private
entertainment " for the traveller unlucky enough to pass that way.
In the one long, narrow main street, closely flanked by log and
framed houses, nothing else human was in sight. Out from this
street, and in an empty square, stood the one brick building in the
place, the court-house, brick without, brick within; unfinished,
unpencilled, unpainted; panes out of the windows, a shutter off
here and there, or swinging drunkenly on one hinge; the door wide
op en, as though there was no privacy within-a poor structure, with
the look of a good man gone shiftless and fast going wrong.

Soon two or three lank brown figures appeared from each direction
on foot; then a horseman or two, and by and by mountaineers came
in groups, on horse and on foot. In time the side alleys and the
court-house square were filled with horses and mules, and even
steers. The mountaineers crowded the narrow street: idling from
side to side; squatting for a bargain on the wooden sidewalks;
grouping on the porch of the rickety hotel, and on the court-house
steps loitering in and out of the one store in sight. Out in the street
several stood about a horse, looking at his teeth, holding his eyes
to the sun, punching his ribs, twisting his tail; while the phlegmatic
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