Katy of Catoctin Author:George Alfred Townsend Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: getting low, and I have no shelter for the night. I would accept the hospitality of your house, if I knew just where it was." " We are not going home, Mr. Qua... more »ntrell," spoke one of the young men, " and there is nobody at our little cabin to entertain you. We are sorry, sir. You will do best to go down into the Catoctin Valley, here, where the settlements are close together. It is not very far to Middletown, where there is a tavern." " Yes," said Isaac Smith, " we are out, Mr. Quantrell, on a night excursion, to hunt minerals in the mountain. I use the divining-rod, sir, with much success. We expect to find lead in these hills, or iron, at least." " Ah, General Smith, you have got a universal head there ! So all-night luck to you, and good-by.—Come, Albion." The dog started ahead at the cry. " God bless you, sir!" said Isaac Smith, taking Lloyd's hand in a large, fatherly palm. " Remember the queer old man's sermon on the mountain, and—never kill a dove again." As the young man waved his hand and went on, he looked back once, and saw all three of the mountaineers watching him till he disappeared in the woods. CHAPTER III. SOME OLD DUTCH. Lloyd Quantrell had still more than an hour of daylight; not enough to find his way back to Sandy Hook, where he had slept at the tavern, but abundant time to walk down the mountain into Catoctin or Middle Creek Valley. He took the side-roads leading from the mountain pasture-lands, then crossed the steep fields, now stripped of their crops, and, finding plenty of chestnuts to fill his pockets, gnawed as he went along, and had a shot or two at some late-feeding partridges; and finally he jumped on a farmer's wagon, the farmer nodding assent pleasantly as he urged his horses, till, at a farm-gate near the creek, the wago...« less