A very pretty village was Ogleport, stuck away off there in that fertile valley among the hills. Mountains these latter grew into within a few miles, with ravines and rocky gorges instead of valleys, and beyond them was the great, mysterious, rugged wilderness, with its tall peaks and its forests full of wild animals. Excellent people were those of Ogleport, with no small opinion of their village and themselves, and their “Academy” was their especial pride. There it stood, in the middle of the great, tree-bordered “village green,” while on either hand of it were the “meeting houses” of the half-dozen denominations among which the people of Ogleport and the surrounding country were divided. A large, steeple-crowned structure of wood, painted white, with the staring windows of its two lofty stories unshaded by any such nonsensical things as blinds, the Academy had evidently been planned by the same architect who had designed the church building, and it was as sober and ugly-looking as any of them. Back of the row of meeting houses and the Academy were long, shadowy rows of ample sheds, for the accommodation of the teams and wagons of the country people on Sundays, and back of that again was the badly kept and tangled-looking “graveyard.” Those sheds were great places for the conclaves of the “boys” of Ogleport, but their larks rarely carried them, even in broad daylight, beyond or through or over the shattered picket fence of the graveyard. Not that they were particularly superstitious, but then, as a general thing, they deemed it just as well to “go around,” and it was, indeed, a queer place to get into alone after sundown. If, however, the boys had any reverence for the bit of land where the village buried its dead, they had none whatever for the big, white building where they were themselves compelled to bury so much of the valuable time they might otherwise have usefully employed in fishing, hunting, and other matters of equal importance. The benches of the several rooms, not excepting those of the “chapel” or lecture-room in the rear, or the great hall in the second story, the frames of the doors, the pine wainscoting, the desks, every reachable piece of wood about the whole concern was notched and scarred by the sharp and busy knives of the boys of Ogleport. More than one busy man, there and elsewhere, if he ever came back again on a visit, could trace his deeply-cut initials, three times painted over, among the innumerable scars of that institution of learning. Zeb Fuller’s generation had done at least their share of this particular kind of improvement, and the oldest inhabitants of the village freely declared their opinion that there had never been such a lot of unreclaimed young savages since the Indians cleared out. Perhaps they were right, and then again perhaps they had forgotten something, but the boys did not trouble their minds much about it, either way.