The master of the house was an officer of the king, for he was collector of customs for the colony and president of the governor's council. British men-of-war sailed up the Potomac and anchored in the stream, and the officers came ashore to be entertained by the Honorable William Fairfax.

The nearness of Mount Vernon and the close connection between the two families led to constant passage between the places. The guests of one were the guests of the other, and George Washington, coming to visit his brother Lawrence, was made at home at Belvoir also. He was a reserved, shy, awkward schoolboy. He was only fifteen when he was thrown into the gay society there, but he was tall, large-limbed, and altogether much older and graver than his years would seem to indicate. He took his place among the men in sports and hunting, and though he was silent and not very lively in his manner, there was something in his serious, strong face which made him a favorite among the ladies.

He met at Belvoir William Fairfax's son, George William, who had recently come home from England, and was just married. He was six years older than George Washington, but that did not prevent them from striking up a warm friendship, which continued through life. The young bride had a sister with her, and this lively girl, Miss Cary, teased and played with the big,

overgrown schoolboy. I do not believe he told her what he wrote to one of his boy friends, that he would have passed his time very pleasantly if all this merriment and young society had not kept him constantly thinking of his "lowland beauty," and wishing himself with her!

But his most notable friend was Thomas, sixth Lord Fairfax, who was at this time staying at Belvoir.1 He had been a brilliant young man, of university education, an officer in a famous regiment, and at home in the fashionable and literary world of London. But he had suffered two terrible disappointments. His mother and his grandmother, when he was a boy, had so misused the property which descended to him from the Fairfaxes that when he came of age it had been largely lost. Then, later on, just as he was about to be married to a fine lady, she discovered that she could have a duke instead, and so broke the engagement and threw Lord Fairfax aside.

It chanced that his mother had all this while an immense property in Virginia, nearly a fifth of the present State, which the good-natured King Charles the Second had given to her. This was now Lord Fairfax's, and he had appointed his cousin, William Fairfax, his agent to look after it. So, when he found all London pitying him or

1 He was of the family of the famous Thomas, third Lord Fairfax, who lived in Cromwell's day, and was the head of that house of fighters who took first the side of Parliament and after ward the side of the King.

smiling at him behind his back, he left England to visit his American estate. That had occurred eight years before George Washington's visit to Belvoir. And now Lord Fairfax was back again, for his taste of Virginian life had so charmed him that he had determined to turn his back on London and plunge again into the wilderness of the New World.

He was at this time nearly sixty years of age, gaunt and grizzled in appearance, and eccentric in many of his ways; but people generally laid that to the disappointments which he had met. He was the great man at Belvoir; the younger people looked with admiration upon the fine-mannered gentleman who had been at court, who knew Steele and Addison and other men of letters, and had now come out into the backwoods to live upon his vast estate, the greatest in all Virginia.

His lordship, meanwhile, cared little for the gay society which gathered at Belvoir; he was courtly to the ladies but they saw little of him. He liked best the free, out-of-doors life in the woods and the excitement of the hunt. It was this that had pleased him when he first visited Virginia, and that now had brought him back for the rest of his life. It was not strange, therefore, that a friendship should spring up between him and the tall. grave lad, who was so strong in limb, who sat his horse so firmly and rode after the hounds so well. They hunted together, and the older man came to

know familiarly and like the strong young American, George Washington.

What if, in the still night, as they sat over their camp fire, the shy boy had told his gaunt, grizzled friend the secret of the trouble which kept him constrained and silent in the midst of the bright company at Belvoir! I fancy this same friend, schooled in Old World experiences and disappointments, knew how to receive this fresh confidence.

Out of this friendship came a very practical advantage. Neither Lord Fairfax nor his cousin William knew the bounds and extent of the lands beyond the Blue Ridge, which formed an important part of his lordship's domain. Moreover, rumors came that persons from the northward had found out the value of these lands, and that one and another had settled upon them without asking leave or troubling themselves about Lord Fairfax's title. At that time the government had done very little toward surveying the country which lay beyond the borders of population. It was left to any one who claimed such land to find out exactly where it was, and of what it consisted.

Lord Fairfax therefore determined to have his property surveyed, and he gave the commission to his young friend George Washington, who had shown not only that he knew how to do the technical work, but that he had those qualities of courage, endurance, and perseverance which were

necessary. The young surveyor had just passed his sixteenth birthday, but, as I have said, he was so serious and self-possessed that his companions did not treat him as a real boy. He did not go alone, for his friend George William Fairfax went with him. As the older of the two, and bearing the name of Fairfax, he was the head of the expedition, but the special work of surveying was to be done by George Washington.