England were not
in the habit of coming to the colonies, except as governors, we must
tell what brought this one across the sea.

It happened in this way. His grandfather, Lord Culpeper, had at one time
been governor of Virginia, and, like some other governors, had taken
care to feather his nest. Seeing how rich the land was between the
Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers, when he went home he asked the king to
give him all this land, and the king, Charles II., in his good easy way
of giving away what did not belong to him, readily consented, without
troubling himself about the rights of the people who lived on the land.
A great and valuable estate it was. Not many dwelt on it, and Lord
Culpeper promised to have it settled and cultivated, but we cannot say
that he troubled himself much about doing so.

When old Culpeper died the Virginia land went to his daughter, and from
her it descended to her son, Lord Fairfax, who sent out his cousin,
William Fairfax, to look after his great estate, which covered a whole
broad county in the wilderness, and counties in those days were often
very large. Lord Fairfax was not much concerned about the American
wildwood. He was one of the fashionable young men in London society, and
something of an author, too, for he helped the famous Addison by writing
some papers for the "Spectator."

But noblemen, like common men, are liable to fall in love, and this Lord
Fairfax did. He became engaged to be married to a handsome young lady;
but she proved to be less faithful than pretty, and when a nobleman of
higher rank asked her to marry him, she threw her first lover aside and
gave herself to the richer one.

This was a bitter blow to Lord Fairfax. He went to his country home and
dwelt there in deep distress, vowing that all women were false-hearted
and that he would never marry any of them. And he never did. Even his
country home was not solitary enough for the broken-hearted lover, so he
resolved to cross the ocean and seek a new home in his wilderness land
in America. It was this that brought him to Virginia, where he went to
live at his cousin's fine mansion called Belvoir, a place not far away
from the Washington estate of Mount Vernon.

Lord Fairfax was a middle-aged man at that time, a tall, gaunt,
near-sighted personage, who spent much of his time in hunting, of which
he was very fond. And his favorite companion in these hunting
excursions was young George Washington, then a fine, fres