proprietor. A log mill, the oldest in Allegheny county, stood below the
barn, and to it the French soldiers had come for meal from Fort
Duquesne. The stream crossed by the bridge was the mill-race, and the
waterfall made by the waste-gate. It was the homestead of a soldier of
the Revolution, one of Washington's lieutenants--the old man we had
seen. The woman was his second wife. They had a numerous family, and an
unpronounceable name.

At home I learned that, on account of a cough, I had been the object of
a generous conspiracy between mother and Mrs. Olever, and had been
brought home because I was worse. Our doctors said I was in the first
stage of consumption, that Elizabeth was to reach that point early in
life, and that our only hope lay in plenty of calomel. Mother had lost
her husband and four vigorous children; there had been no lack of
calomel, and now, when death again threatened, she resolved to conduct
the defense on some new plan.

She had gained legal possession of our village home, and moved to it.
Our lot was large and well supplied with choice fruit, and the place
seemed a paradise after our starved lives in the smoky city. My apple
tree still grew at the east end of the house. There was a willow tree
mother had planted, which now swept the ground with its long, graceful
branches. There were quantities of rose and lilac bushes, a walled
spring of delicious water in the cellar, and a whole world of wealth;
but the potato lot looked up in despair--a patch of yellow clay. Mother
put a twelve years' accumulation of coal ashes on it, and thus proved
them valuable both as a fertilizer and a preventive of potato-rot,
though at first her project met general opposition.

William did the heavy work and was proud of it. He was in splendid