“I told Clark a few minutes ago that I’d go out to western Pennsylvania and hunt up the boy and help him run down whatever clues he has.  Clark was delighted at the offer—­said he didn’t like to go himself and leave his sisters with this man roaming around the place half the time.”

“It was kind of you.  I’ve no doubt Stanley is working it all out well, but, boy-like, he doesn’t realize that the people at home want to have him report to them every day.”

“My proposal is, Marion, that you lend me these children, Helen and the Ethels and Roger, for a few days’ trip.”

“Wow, wow!” rose a shout of joy.

“Or, better still, that you come, too, and bring Dicky.”

Mrs. Morton was not a sailor’s wife for nothing.

“I’ll do it,” she said promptly.  “When do you want us to start?”

“Can you be ready for an early morning train from New York?”

“We can!” was the instant reply of every person in the room.

CHAPTER XVI

FAIRYLAND

All day long the train pulled its length across across the state of Pennsylvania, climbing mountains and bridging streams and piercing tunnels.  All day long Mr. Emerson’s party was on the alert, dashing from one side to the other of the car to see some beautiful vista or to look down on a brook brawling a hundred feet below the trestle that supported them or waving their hands to groups of children staring open-mouthed at the passing train.

“Pennsylvania is a beautiful state,” decided Ethel Brown as they penetrated the splendid hills of the Allegheny range.

“Nature made it one of the most lovely states of the Union,” returned her grandfather.  “Man has played havoc with it in spots.  Some of the villages among the coal mines are hideous from the waste that has been thrown out for years upon a pile never taken away, always increasing.  No grass grows on it, no children play on it, the hens won’t scratch on it.  The houses of the miners turn one face to this ugliness and it is only because they turn toward the mountains on another side that the people are preserved from the death of the spirit that comes to those who look forever on the unlovely.”

“Is there any early history about here?” asked Helen, whose interest was unfailing in the story of her country.

“The French and Indian Wars were fought in part through this land,” answered Mr. Emerson.  “You remember the chief struggle for the continent lay between the English and the French.  There were many reasons why the Indians sided with the French in Canada, and the result of the friendship was that; the natives were supplied with arms by the Europeans and the struggle was prolonged for about seventy-five years.”

“Wasn’t the attack on Deerfield during the French and Indian War?” asked Ethel Blue.

“Yes, and there were many other such attacks.”