and marks the spot, where, whilom, petty thieves, shiftless vagrants, and other small offenders against the majesty of the law, were wont to suffer a shameful penalty for their vile misdeeds.
On the western side of the square, on the summit of the grassy slope, stands the Presbyterian meeting-house, flanked on one side by the academy, and on the other by the court-house. There are, besides, two other places of worship in the village; but neither is built upon the square; and when, at Belfield, the meeting-house is mentioned, the speaker is understood to indicate by that title the edifice which stands between the academy and the court-house, and not the plain, square structure, with neither steeple nor bell, in which the Baptists assemble for worship, nor the little white Methodist chapel in the lane, with green blinds to its windows, and a little toy of a turret, scarcely bigger than a martin-box, upon its shingled roof.
The quaint style and old-fashioned aspect of Belfield meeting-house attest its venerable age. For more than a hundred years its slender spire has glowed in the ruddy beams of early dawn, and cast at sunset its lengthening shadow across the village green. A century ago, the mellow tones of its Sabbath bell, echoing through the valley, summoned the pious congregation to their austere devotions. Before the worn threshold of the great double-leaved door, in the broadside of the building, lies a platform, which was once a solid shelf of red sandstone, but now is cracked in twain, and hollowed by the footsteps of six generations. In the very spot where it now lies it has lain ever since the first framed meeting-house was built in Belfield, in the reign of good King William III. There, gathered in a little knot, on Sundays and public. days, the forefathers of the settlement used to talk over the current news; how the first Port Royal expedition had failed; or how New England militia-men, without aid from home, had captured the great fortress of Louisburg, after a brief and glorious siege. There, still later, the sons of these men rejoiced at the news of Wolfe's victory, and sorrowfully related the sad intelligence of Braddock's shameful defeat. There stood their grandsons, a flushed, excited throng of hardy yeomen, clinching their fists unconsciously, and breathing hard and fast, as they listened to the tidings of the fight at Concord Bridge. Here, during the war that followed, when troops were mustered before marching off to camp, the roll used to be called upon this very stone. No town of its size in ail New England contributed a larger number to the ranks of the Continental army than did Belfield. One hot summer, all the unwonted tolls and unbefitting cares of haying and harvest fell upon the little boys and women and a few old gray-haired men, whose aged limbs had long before earned the right to rest. In all Belfield there was not a male able to bear arms who was not gone to camp. Some war-worn veterans lived to return; and many a Sunday noon, in later years, sitting here, upon the broad doorstone of the meeting-house, they used to tell over the stories of their battles and campaigns, until the sound from the belfry overhead, and the sight of the minister approaching from the parsonage, with stately pace and solemn aspect, would check the flowing current of their talk, and recall their thought to subjects more in keeping with the holy Sabbath-day. But some of the friends and comrades of these brave men never came home; their bones lie mouldering beneath the turf at White Plains, at Saratoga, at Brandywine, and at Princeton. Some perished with cold and hunger at Valley Forge; some died of fever in the horrible Old Sugar-house; some rotted alive in the Jersey prison-hulk; some lie buried under the gloomy walls of Dartmoor; and some there were whose fate was never known.
It was the custom, formerly, to hold all meetings for the transaction of public business in the sanctuary. None, not
