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Updated: June 24, 2025
About it, on two sides of the Kentucky River, sprawled the town of Frankfort; sleepy, more or less disheveled at the center, and stretching to shaded environs of Colonial houses set in lawns of rich bluegrass, amid the shade of forest trees. Circling the town in an embrace of quiet beauty rose the Kentucky River hills.
She sped back upon the little bridge, and, when he would have followed, held her hand up with a gesture of such native dignity, offended womanhood, that he stopped where he was, abashed. "No no, sir; you can't cross this bridge," said she. "No man ever can, unless unless " Almost sobbing, now, she left the sentence incomplete; and then: "Oh, you wouldn't dared act so to a bluegrass girl!
Conscious that a busy day was looming large before her, she now blew out her candles and crept into her little curtained bed, to dream, there, vividly, of haughty beauties from the bluegrass staring in astonishment as they first glimpsed the beauty of a little mountain girl in such a gorgeous outfit as they had not in all their pampered lives conceived; of lovely aunts who smiled with pleasure when they saw their handsome nephews step up to this splendid maiden and take her hands in theirs; of wondrous youths ah, these images were never absent from the scenes her fancy painted! who scorned the haughty bluegrass beauties in favor of the freckled little fists of those same brilliant mountain maidens, and, lo! by taking those same freckled fists in theirs, removed the freckles and the callouses of work as if by magic, making them as white and fine aye, whiter, finer! than the haughty bluegrass beauty's.
But she thought the present Union force would remain quite a while, as she did not look for the reappearance of the Southern army in Kentucky. But if the town were left without troops she would go back to her relatives in the Bluegrass, as Bill Skelly's band to the eastward in the mountains was raiding and plundering and had become a great menace.
What right had she, a mountain-girl, to come down there to the bluegrass to shame him in the face of friends and foes by her ignorance and awkwardness?
Every county in the State was ravaged by a guerilla band and the ranks of these marauders began to be swelled by Confederates, particularly in the mountains and in the hills that skirt them. Banks, trains, public vaults, stores, were robbed right and left, and murder and revenge were of daily occurrence. Daws Dillon was an open terror both in the mountains and in the Bluegrass.
Then he told the Major all about himself and old Nathan and the Turners and the school-master, and how he hoped to come back to the Bluegrass, and go to that big college himself, and he amazed the Major when, glancing at the books, he spelled out the titles of two of Scott's novels, "The Talisman" and "Ivanhoe," and told how the school-master had read them to him.
Up through the blistered, sandy, piney lowlands; through Chickamauga again, full of volunteers who, too, had suffered and risked all the ills of the war without one thrill of compensation; and on again, until he was once more on the edge of the Bluegrass, with birds singing the sun down; and again the world for him was changed from nervous exaltation to an air of balm and peace; from grim hills to the rolling sweep of low, brown slopes; from giant-poplar to broad oak and sugar-tree; from log-cabin to homestead of brick and stone.
Everything seemed to sing in that wonderful land. And the seas of bluegrass stretching away on every side, with the shadows of clouds passing in rapid succession over them, like mystic floating islands and never a mountain in sight. What a strange country it was. "Maybe some of your friends are looking for you in Frankfort," said the Major.
From another path than that by which he had approached the place there came the sound of voices raised in talk and laughter. He easily identified them, to his great surprise, as those of some young mountain-girl and some young bluegrass gentleman. Their tones and accents told this story plainly.
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