he words.

CHAPTER III.

I could write many chapters about our life at Belfield, and perhaps of
all I have to tell nothing would be so well worth telling. Belfield is a
quiet place on the shore of Long Island Sound, placidly sleeping through
the summers and autumns beneath the shadows of its immemorial trees. We
went to school on the hill: below us was our ancient church built in
far-off colonial times, and connected with many a story of Revolutionary
times, to which we used to listen greedily: George Lenox had one of
which we never tired.

"My grandfather," said he, "went to church the Sunday after the
proclamation of the Declaration of Independence, and when the clergyman
read the prayers for the royal family he stood up in his pew and cried
out that no such prayers must be read in Belfield--that George III.'s
name was no longer the name of our friend, but of our worst enemy. The
minister rose and shut up his prayer-book forthwith, raised his hand and
pronounced the benediction, and the church was closed until the end of
the war. We were good Federalists, we were," continued Mr. Lenox, "but
we had one staunch Tory and Churchman in our family. After the church
was closed my grandfather's family used to attend Presbyterian meeting
on the hill, close by where your schoolhouse now stands; but their old
dog, Duke, would never go past the church when he followed his master
out on Sunday mornings: he would not go to Presbyterian meeting--not he:
he stretched himself on the great millstone before the closed
church-door."

When Jack, Harry and I sat together on the high "back seat" at school we
had a good view down the hill at the weather-stained old church, with
its imperishable gilt vane on top of the tall spire. Often enough our
vagrant eyes wandered that way, but not that we cared for green slopes
or colonial church or venerable weathercock. The truth of the matter
was, that we oftentimes saw Georgy Lenox walking along the quiet street
under the elms. To tell of our early life in Belfield, and say nothing
of the influence which was already moulding the lives of at least two of
us, would be to give an incomplete and partial picture. I was an
imaginative boy, and Jack was the reverse, yet we were both desperately
in love with the same girl. As for Harry, nobody ever decided what he
felt toward her. They continually quarrelled when they were together,
and Harry sometimes took pains to abuse her in her absence: he