deavor,
I love its winds and floods, its suns and sands,
But, oh, I love most deeply and forever
The clinging touch of timid little hands.

The Ohio woods were gorgeous with the October coloring. The oak in regal
purple stood outlined against the beech in cloth-of-gold, while
green-flecked hickory and elm, and iridescent silver and scarlet ash, and
flaming maple added to the kaleidoscope of splendor.

The old National pike road leading down to Cloverdale was still flanked by
little rail-fenced fields that were bordered by deep woodlands. The old
Aydelot farmhouse was as neat and white, with gardens and flower beds as
well kept, as if only a day had passed since the master and mistress
thereof had gone out to their last earthly home in the Cloverdale
graveyard.

Fifteen years had seen the frontier pushed westward with magic swiftness.
The Grass River Valley, once a wide reach of emptiness and solitude, where
only one homestead stood a lone bulwark against the forces of the
wilderness, now, after a decade and a half, beheld its prairie dotted with
freeholds, where the foundations of homes were laid.

Fifteen years marked little appreciable change in the heritage given up by
Asher Aydelot out of his love for a girl and his dream of a larger
opportunity in the new West. For fifteen springtimes the old-fashioned
sweet pinks had blossomed on the two mounds where his last service had
been given to his native estate. Hardly a tree had been cut in the Aydelot
woods. The marshes in the lower ground had not been drained. The only
change in the landscape was the high grade of the railroad that cut a
triangle from the northwest corner of the farm in its haste to reach
Cloverdale and be done with it. The census of 1880, however, showed an
increase in ten years of seventy-five citizens in Clover County, and the
community felt satisfied with itself.

The afternoon train on the Cloverdale branch was late getting into town,
but the station parasites were rewarded for their patience by the sight of
a stranger following the usual two or three passengers who alighted.
Strangers were not so common in Cloverdale that anyone's face would be
forgotten under ten years of time.

"That's that same feller that come here ten year or mebby twelve year ago.
I'd know him in Guinea," one of the oldest station parasites declared.

"That's him, sure as shootin'," his comrade-in-laziness agreed. "A doctor,
don't