he
homesickness epidemic among the female population of the Creek had
already seized upon her so strongly as to unfit her for conversation;
and Miselle devoted herself to the dismal landscape, privately agreeing
with her companion that it was "the God-forsakenest-looking place she
ever see."

On either side the road lay swamps, their gaunt trees festooned, or
rather garroted, with vines, and draped with gray moss; while all about
and among them lay their comrades already prostrate and decaying. On the
higher lands fields had been fenced in, and cleared by burning the
trees, whose charred skeletons still stood, holding black and fleshless
arms to heaven in mute appeal against man's reckless abuse of Nature's
dearest children.

Later Miselle took occasion to express her horror at the wholesale
destruction of her beloved forests to a land-owner of the region. He
laughed, and stared at the sentimental folly, and then said,
conclusively,--

"Oh, but the land, you know,--we want to get at the land; and the
quickest way of disposing of the trees is the best."

"But even if they must be felled, it is wicked to destroy them entirely,
when so many people freeze to death every winter for want of fuel."

"Well, I suppose they do," said the land-owner, suppressing a yawn. "But
we can't send them this wood, you know, or even get it down Oil Creek,
where there is a market."

"At least, the poor people about here need never be cold. I suppose fuel
is very cheap through all this country, isn't it?"

"Down the Creek we pay ten dollars a cord for all the wood, and a dollar
a bushel for all the coal we burn, and both grow within a mile of the
wells; but the trouble is the labor. Every man about here is in oil,
somehow or another; and even the farmers back of the Creek prefer
bringing their horses down and teaming oil to working the land or
felling wood. This is emphatically the oil region."

Arrived at Schaeffer's or Shaffer's Farm, the present terminus of the
Oil Creek Railway, Miselle was relieved from much anxiety by seeing upon
the platform Friend Williams, to whom she had, in a fit of temporary
insanity, written that she should leave home on Tuesday instead of
Monday.

"And how shall we go down the Creek?" asked she, when the first
greetings had been exchanged.

"In the packet-boat, to be sure. The hack-carriage will take us right
down to the wharf."

Miselle opened her eyes. Here was metropolitan luxury! Here was ultra