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followed the army and the fleet on the map with the deepest interest. And Pete's prediction was fulfilled, for Captain Maitland actually found time to write Godfrey a most interesting letter, which lived in Godfrey's pocket and slept under his pillow at night, till it tore to pieces in the folds, after which Angel mended it with paste, and it was locked into a box upstairs of which Godfrey kept the key, lest thieves should get into the house and steal it. They were stirring times, those first years of our nineteenth century, when the news from abroad was of fierce struggles by land and sea, when the talk by the fireside and in the village streets was of an invasion that might be, when Englishmen would have to stand shoulder to shoulder, and fight on their own thresholds for country and home. All these things, the battles and the sieges, the plans and counter-plans, the great names of men who helped to change the fate of Europe, we read in our history books. The shadow of the war, the anxiety about the present and fear about the future, must have hung like a cloud over our country in those years, and yet, notwithstanding, life went on quietly in the homes which the great danger was threatening, and people worked and played and laughed, and cared more on the whole about their own small affairs than about the big affairs of Europe. And so, though those years when England's enemies were watching her across the narrow seas, and wise men were planning and brave men fighting for her liberties, are so interesting in the history books, there is not very much to tell about the good folks at Oakfield. In those days, when no one had begun to think about railways, country people left home very little, and the changes of the seasons, sowing and reaping, hay-time and harvest, made the chief events of their lives; and though it seemed very important to Oakfield, it wouldn't be very interesting to any one else to hear of the wonderful apple crop in the orchard at the Place, or of how the miller's pony strayed away on the common and was lost for two days, or of how Godfrey and Nancy missed their way when out blackberrying, and came home after dark to find the aunts half distracted and Rogers and Pete searching, all over the country. 'The slow, sweet hours that bring us all things good.' Those words always seem to me to describe the quiet years when nothing particular happens, when we are growing and learning almost without
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