Oldfield

ed with wild strawberries that the horses' hoofs were dyed rosy-red--there the deadly mystery of "the milk-sickness" was already spreading its invisible shroud over the whole beautiful land.

Fleeing from these perils more to be feared than the cruelest savages, and more to be dreaded than the fiercest wild beasts, the travellers went further into the heart of the wilderness, seeking the safety of higher ground; on and on, following the buffalo tracks which still traversed the country from end to end like broad, hard-beaten highways. One of these led them along a range of hills and into a fertile little valley, and it was here that the Virginians finally found a resting-place. It was here in this vale of rest, folded between these quiet hills, that the village of Oldfield grew out of that settlement, and here that it stands to-day scarcely altered from its beginning. Over the hills--there on the east where tender green of the crowning trees melts into the tenderer blue of the arching clouds--there still