Mr. Cushman, who was a successful farmer living
in the White Oak district, and an old friend of Uncle Bobbie's, gladly
welcomed the young man, of whom his old partner, Wicks, had written
so highly. When Dick left the train at Armourdale, a little village
in the lead and zinc field, he was greeted at once by his host, a
bluff, pleasant-faced, elderly gentleman, whom he liked at first sight,
and who was completely captivated by his guest before they had been
together half an hour.
Oak Springs Farm, which was to be Dick's home for the next month, took
in the whole of a beautiful little glen, and many acres of timber-land
on either side. Crane Creek had its source, or rather one of its
sources, within a hundred feet of the house, where a big spring bubbled
from beneath the roots of a giant oak, and the water went chattering
and laughing away to the south and east.
Three-quarters of a mile from Oak Springs, just over the ridge in
another hollow, another stream gushed bright and clear, from beneath
another ancient oak and went rushing away to join its fellow brook a
mile distant, where the little glens broadened into a large valley,
through which the creek hurried onward to the great river, miles away
in the heart of the wilderness.
It was all very beautiful and restful to the young man, wearied and
worn by the rush and whirl of the city, and stifled with the dust and
smoke from factory and furnace. The low hills, clothed with foliage,
richly stained by October's brush; the little valley lying warm in the
sunlight, was a welcome change to the dead monotony of the prairie,
where the sky shut down close to the dull brown earth, with no support
of leafy pillars.
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