One of them, the youngest, married late in life, and dying soon after left a widow and a posthumous son John, of whom more hereafter.

The elder brother was graduated from West Point, served some years with distinction, and marrying found himself obliged to resign his captaincy on his father's death to take charge of the iron-mills and mines, which had become far more important to the family than their extensive forest-holdings on the foot-hills of the western watershed of the Alleghanies.
The country had long been well settled.

The farmers thrived as the mills and mines needed increasing supplies of food and the railway gave access to market.

The small village of Westways was less fortunate than the county.

Strung along the side of the road opposite to Penhallow's woods, it had lost the bustling prosperity of a day when the Conestoga wagons stopped over-night at the "General Wayne Inn" and when as yet no one dreamed that the new railroad would ruin the taverns set at intervals along the highway to Pittsburgh.