CIVIL WAR 198 RECOVERY 222 INDEX 235 ILLUSTRATIONS _John Campbell, 4th Earl of Loudoun_ Frontispiece FACE PAGE _Map of Loudoun County_ 1 _Sir Alexander Spotswood_ 20 _Sir Peter Halkett, Bart_ 83 _The Fall of Braddock_ 93 _William Petty-FitzMaurice_ 116 _Nicholas Cresswell_ 129 _Noland Mansion_ 139 _Oatlands_ 171 _Foxcroft_ 173 _Rockland_ 175 _General George Rust_ 176 _Oak Hill_ 178 _Oak Hill, East Drawing Room_ 179 _Old Valley Bank_ 203 _Battle of Ball's Bluff_ 205 _Old John Janney House_ 226 LEGENDS OF LOUDOUN CHAPTER I THE EARLIER INDIANS [Illustration: MAP LOUDOUN COUNTY, VIRGINIA] The county of Loudoun, as now constituted, is an area of 525 square miles, lying in the extreme northwesterly corner of Virginia, in that part of the Old Dominion known as the Piedmont and of very irregular shape, its upper apex formed by the Potomac River on the northeast and the Blue Ridge Mountains on the northwest, pointing northerly. It is a region of equable climate, with a mean temperature of from 50 to 55 degrees, seldom falling in winter below fahrenheit zero nor rising above the upper nineties during its long summer, thus giving a plant-growing season of about two hundred days in each year.