So lonely and forlorn did he seem, and so harmless withal—for the old man never was known to do a mean action, or resent an angry word—that many uncouth kindnesses had been shown him on the part of the hands, with whom he was by no means unpopular. Especially had this been the case latterly; for, though he himself was apparently unconscious of it, so terribly broken had he become that the change was sorrowful to behold; and, rude as were the foundry-workmen, what there was pathetic in the patient manner in which the feeble old man silently worked on told upon them by instinct. There had even been an interest taken in him up at the great house. Every season, “the colonel,” as the owner and sole proprietor of the Rocky Ford Foundry was called by all the employes, brought his family down from the city to spend a few months rusticating in the beautiful Scioto Valley, where he had built a summer residence for that purpose, and that he might be near his great iron-works at the same time. There was always gay company up at the house—visitors from town, who needed no second invitation to entice them from the dust of the city to this peaceful retreat among the lovely hills of Ohio. Besides, the colonel had a beautiful daughter, and every body liked the “young misses.” Seldom, though, did she ever go down to the foundry; never, indeed unless some special object took her there. Coming from her home a mile distant—this home for her embowered in perpetual Summer and wrapped in the peace that broods upon the everlasting hills, where she could see, far off, the golden meadow-lands and the more distant Paint Ridge, with its transparent veil of mist; this home from which she had often looked out and listened to the blue Scioto, unflecked with sail or skiff, struggling by day and night to tell its mysterious story, as it flowed forever on its lonely course—coming from this home, over the narrow path that led down the slope to the river’s edge, where the green rushes grew and the wild columbine hung its bells above the water—coming on, past the great rocks, where the scarlet lichens flamed in the sun and the blossoming alder displayed its drifted clusters; coming still with active feet over the velvet moss—coming from the lovely valley, coming from the tranquil hills, when she entered the foundry it seemed like stepping suddenly from the beautiful world into some haunt of evil spirits.