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