The Penn Publishing Company
923 ARCH STREET, PHILADELPHIA, PA.
Copyright 1902 by The Penn Publishing Company
Young Folks Magazine
VOL. I MARCH 1902 No. 1
WITH WASHINGTON AT VALLEY FORGE
By W. Bert Foster
CHAPTER I
Unwelcome Guests at the Three Oaks Inn
ALL day the strident whistle of the locust had declared for a continuation of the parching heat. The meadows lay brown under the glare of the August sun; the roads were deep in powdery yellow dust. The cattle stood with sweating flanks in the shade of the oaks which bordered the stage track, and although the sun was now declining toward the summits of the distant mountains, all nature continued in the somnolence of a summer day.
A huddle of sheep under a wagon shed and the lolling form of a big collie dog in the barnyard were the only signs of life about the Three Oaks Inn. Mistress and maids, as well as the guests now sheltered by its moss-grown roof, had retired to the cooler chambers, and Jonas Benson, the portly landlord, snored loudly in his armchair in the hall. Out of this hall, with its exposed beams of time-blackened oak and its high fanlight over the entrance, opened the main room, its floor sanded in an intricate pattern that very morning by one of the maids. Across the hall was the closed door of the darkened parlor.
Had Jonas Benson been of a more wakeful mind this hot afternoon, it is quite likely that this narrative would never have been written. But he snored on while behind the closed door of the parlor were whispered words which, had they reached the ears of the landlord of the Three Oaks, would have put him instantly on the alert.