though in league with the French to intimidate, if not drive back, these spies of French aggression. It rained and snowed, and the little pathway became well-nigh impassable. The brown mountain ranges, which until recently had been burnished with the glory of a mountain autumn, were wet and black. Scarce eighteen miles were covered a day, a whole week being exhausted in reaching the Monongahela. But this was not altogether unfortunate. A week was not too long for the future Father of the West to study the hills and valleys which were to bear forever the precious favor of his devoted and untiring zeal. And in this week this youth conceived a dream and a purpose, the dearest, if not the most dominant, of his life—the union, commercial as well as political, of the East and the West. Yet he passed Great Meadows without seeing Fort Necessity, Braddock's Run without seeing Braddock's unmarked grave, and Laurel Hill without a premonition of the covert in the valley below, where shortly he should shape the stones above a Frenchman's grave. But could he have seen it all—
