oad; but at that time a branch
line from Hallsport on the Bay, encouraged by the opening of a small
granite quarry in the Flamsted Hills, made its terminus at The
Corners--a sawmill settlement at the falls of the Rothel, a river that
runs rapidly to the sea after issuing from Lake Mesantic. A mile beyond
the station the village proper begins at its two-storied tavern, The
Greenbush.

From the lower veranda of this hostelry, one may look down the shaded
length of the main street, dignified by many an old-fashioned house, to
The Bow, an irregular peninsula extending far into the lake and
containing some two hundred acres. This estate is the ancestral home of
the Champneys, known as Champ-au-Haut, in the vernacular "Champo." At
The Bow the highway turns suddenly, crosses a bridge over the Rothel and
curves with the curving pine-fringed shores of the lake along the base
of the mountain until it climbs the steep ascent that leads to Googe's
Gore, the third division of the town of Flamsted.

As in all New England towns, that are the possessors of "old families,"
so in Flamsted;--its inhabitants are partisans. The result is, that it
has been for years as a house divided against itself, and heated
discussion of the affairs of the Googes at the Gore and the Champneys at
The Bow has been from generation to generation an inherited interest.
And from generation to generation, as the two families have ramified and
intermarriages occurred more and more frequently, party spirit has run
higher and higher and bitter feelings been engendered. But never have
the factional differences been more pronounced and the lines of
separation drawn with a sharper ploughshare in this mountain-ramparted
New England town, than during the five years subsequent to the opening
of the Flamsted Quarries which brought in its train the railroad and the
immigrants. This event was looked upon by the inhabitants as the
Invasion of the New.

The interest of the first faction was centred in Champ-au-Haut and its
present possessor, the widow of Louis Champney, old Judge Champney's
only son. That of the second in the Googes, Aurora and her son Champney,
the owners of Googe's Gore and its granite outcrop.

The office room of The Greenbush has been for two generations the
acknowledged gathering place of the representatives of the hostile
camps. On a cool evening in June, a few days after the departure of
several New York promoters, who had formed a syndicate to ex