A full game-bag on his back showed what his employment had been, but now he gave himself over to the rare but delicious idleness which occasionally overtakes everybody who tramps long through the woods. He sat down and took off his cap, revealing his handsome, blond head. The dog, a beautiful long-eared setter, laid his nose confidentially upon his master’s knee, and blinked solemnly, with his large, tawny eyes, into his master’s blue ones. The boy’s eyes were remarkable--a light but beautiful blue, and softening a face that, even in boyhood, was full of resolution and even sternness. His figure was as near perfection as the human form could be--tall, athletic, clean of limb and deep of chest, singularly graceful, and developed, as the wise old Greeks developed their bodies, by manly exercises and healthful brain-work and the cleanest and most wholesome living. Neither the face nor the figure could belong to a milksop. The indications of strong passions, of fierce loves and hates and resentments, were plain enough. But stronger even than these was that noble expression which a purity of soul and a commanding will always writes upon the human countenance. This boy was a gentleman at heart and in soul--not because he had no temptation to be otherwise, but because he chose to be a gentleman. He sat in silence for half an hour, the dog resting against him, the two communing together as only a boy and a dog can. The sun shone, the wind scarcely ruffled a dying leaf. A crow circled around in the blue air, uttering a caw that was lost in the immensity of the heavens. The silence seemed to grow deeper every moment, when, with a quick movement, George laid his ear to the ground. To an unpractised ear there was not the slightest break in the quiet, but to the boy’s trained hearing something was approaching along the highway, which induced him to sit still awhile longer. It was some time in coming, for the heavy coaches in those days hung upon wide leather straps, and with broad-tired wheels made much commotion as they rolled along, to say nothing of the steady beat of the horses’ hoofs upon the hard road. George’s eyes were as quick as his ears, but he caught nothing of the approaching travellers until the cavalcade flashed suddenly into the sun, and with its roar and rattle seemed to spring out of the ground.