Miller Chase plied an honest trade in Medford rum while the farmers waited for the wobbly stones to grind their corn or the saws to saw their logs. Horses and oxen grazed at hand, taking the opportunity to enjoy the delicious grass growing so abundantly in the rich, fertile valley.
One day True chanced to remark upon this grass to his friend Old Grey.
“Know you not,” she asked, astonished at his youthful ignorance, “how it came to be broadcast here?”
“Not I!” whinneyed True. Suffice it that he was enjoying its satisfying plentifulness to the fullest after his hard day in the plow.
And she told him.
After the massacre, in which her master, Experience Davis, had been captured, in plundering Zadock Steele’s hut, before burning it, an Indian found a sack of valuable grass-seed. He put it over his shoulder and started off down the valley.
After a while he noticed, vaguely, that his load, unlike the usual manner of loads, became lighter the farther he travelled, but he stupidly did not think to glance over his shoulder at his burden.
When he reached Dog River there was not a grass-seed left in the sack!
Through a tiny hole in the bag he had, unintentionally, sown this wonderful seed all the way from Randolph, and for years it grew up, unmowed, uneaten, and almost man-high, to make the White River Valley famous, and supply grass and hay for farmers and horses.