It seemed to me worth while to use the life of one of these groups of
people as the background of a story which also deals with the influence
of politics and war on all classes.




WESTWAYS




CHAPTER I


The first Penhallow crossed the Alleghanies long before the War for
Independence and on the frontier of civilisation took up land where the
axe was needed for the forest and the rifle for the Indian. He made a
clearing and lived a hard life of peril, wearily waiting for the charred
stumps to rot away.

The younger men of the name in Colonial days and later left the place
early, and for the most part took to the sea or to the army, if there
were activity in the way of war. In later years, others drifted westward
on the tide of border migration, where adventure was always to be had.
This stir of enterprise in a breed tends to extinction in the male lines.
Men are thinned out in their wooing of danger--the _belle dame sans
merci_. Thus there were but few Penhallows alive at any one time, and
yet for many years they bred in old-fashioned numbers.