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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Viola Gwyn, by George Barr McCutcheon
(#11 in our series by George Barr McCutcheon)

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Title: Viola Gwyn
Author: George Barr McCutcheon
Release Date: July, 2004 [EBook #6013]

[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]

[This file was first posted on October 16, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, VIOLA GWYN ***

Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading
Team.
[Illustration: "I shall get married when and where I please,--and

to whom I please, Mr. Gwynne."]
VIOLA GWYN
BY George Barr McCutcheon

CONTENTS
PROLOGUE--THE BEGINNING
CHAPTER

I SHELTER FOR THE NIGHT
II THE STRANGE YOUNG WOMAN
III SOMETHING ABOUT CLOTHES, AND MEN, AND CATS
IV VIOLA GWYN
V REFLECTIONS AND AN ENCOUNTER
VI BARRY LAPELLE
VII THE END OF THE LONG ROAD
VIII RACHEL CARTER
IX BROTHER AND SISTER
X MOTHER AND DAUGHTER
XI A ROADSIDE MEETING
XII ISAAC STAIN APPEARS BY NIGHT
XIII THE GRACIOUS ENEMY
XIV A MAN FROM DOWN THE RIVER
XV THE LANDING OF THE "PAUL REVERE"
XVI CONCERNING TEMPESTS AND INDIANS
XVII REVELATIONS
XVIII RACHEL DELIVERS A MESSAGE
XIX LAPELLE SHOWS HIS TEETH
XX THE BLOW
XXI THE AFFAIR AT HAWK'S CABIN
XXII THE PRISONERS
XXIII CHALLENGE AND RETORT
XXIV IN AN UPSTAIRS ROOM
XXV MINDA CARTER
XXVI THE FLIGHT OF MARTIN HAWK
XXVII THE TRIAL OF MOLL HAWK
XXVIII THE TRYSTING PLACE OF THOUGHTS
XXIX THE ENDING
PROLOGUE
THE BEGINNING

Kenneth Gwynne was five years old when his father ran away with
Rachel Carter, a widow. This was in the spring of 1812, and in
the fall his mother died. His grandparents brought him up to hate
Rachel Carter, an evil woman.

She was his mother's friend and she had slain her with the viper's
tooth. From the day that his questioning intelligence seized upon
the truth that had been so carefully withheld from him by his
broken-hearted mother and those who spoke behind the hand when
he was near,--from that day he hated Rachel Carter with all his
hot and outraged heart. He came to think of her as the embodiment
of all that was evil,--for those were the days when there was no

middle-ground for sin and women were either white or scarlet.

He rejoiced in the belief that in good time Rachel Carter would come
to roast in the everlasting fires of hell, grovelling and wailing
at the feet of Satan, the while his lovely mother looked down
upon her in pity,--even then he wondered if such a thing were
possible,--from her seat beside God in His Heaven. He had no doubts
about this. Hell and heaven were real to him, and all sinners went
below. On the other hand, his father would be permitted to repent and
would instantly go to heaven. It was inconceivable that his big,
strong, well-beloved father should go to the bad place. But Mrs. Carter
would! Nothing could save her! God would not pay any attention to
her if she tried to repent; He would know it was only "make-believe"
if she got down on her knees and prayed for forgiveness. He was
convinced that Rachel Carter could not fool God. Besides, would
not his mother be there to remind Him in case He could not exactly
remember what Rachel Carter had done? And were there not dozens of
good, honest people in the village who would probably be in Heaven
by that time and ready to stand before the throne and bear witness
that she was a bad woman?

No, Rachel Carter could never get into Heaven. He was glad.
No matter if the Scriptures did say all that about the sinner who
repents, he did not believe that God would let her in. He supported
this belief by the profoundly childish contention that if God let
EVERYBODY in, then there would be no use having a hell at all. What
was the use of being good all your life if the bad people could
get into Heaven at the last minute by telling God they were sorry
and never would do anything bad again as long as they lived? And
was not God the wisest Being in all the world? He knew EVERYTHING!
He knew all about Rachel Carter. She would go to the bad place and
stay there forever, even after the "resurrection" and the end of
the world by fire in 1883, a calamity to which he looked forward
with grave concern and no little trepidation at the thoughtful age
of six.

At first they told him his father had gone off as a soldier to
fight against the Indians and the British. He knew that a war was
going on. Men with guns were drilling in the pasture up beyond
his grandfather's house, and there was talk of Indian "massacrees,"
and Simon Girty's warriors, and British red-coats, and the awful
things that happened to little boys who disobeyed their elders
and went swimming, or berrying, or told even the teeniest kind of
fibs. He overheard his grandfather and the neighbours discussing
a battle on Lake Erie, and rejoiced with them over the report of
a great victory for "our side." Vaguely he had grasped the news of
a horrible battle on the Tippecanoe River, far away in the wilderness
to the north and west, in which millions of Indians were slain,
and he wondered how many of them his father had killed with his
rifle,--a weapon so big and long that he came less than half way
up the barrel when he stood beside it.

His father was a great shot. Everybody said so. He could kill wild
turkeys a million miles away as easy as rolling off a log, and deer,
and catamounts, and squirrels, and herons, and everything. So his
father must have killed heaps of Indians and red-coats and renegades.

He put this daily question to his mother: "How many do you s'pose
of 00

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