was so impatient I got ahead. He doesn't walk as briskly as he did
twenty years ago."

Yet briskly enough for his years did the octogenarian walk in through
the little pillared portico a moment later. Such deliberation as his
movements had might as well have been the mark of a proper self-esteem
as the effect of age. He was a slender but wiry-looking old gentleman,
was Matthias Valentine, of Valentine's Hill; in appearance a credit to
the better class of countrymen of his time. His white hair was tied in
a cue, as if he were himself a landowner instead of only a manorial
tenant. Yet no common tenant was he. His father, a dragoon in the
French service, had come down from Canada and settled on Philipse
Manor, and Matthias had been proprietor of Valentine's Hill, renting
from the Philipses in earlier days than any one could remember. His
grandsons now occupied the Hill, and the old man was in the full
enjoyment of the leisure he had won. His rather sharp countenance,
lighted by honest gray eyes, was a mixture of good-humor, childlike
ingenuousness, and innocent jocosity. The neatness of his hair, his
carefully shaven face, and the whole condition of his brown cloth coat
and breeches and worsted stockings, denoted a fastidiousness rarely at
any time, and particularly in the good (or bad) old days, to be found
in common with rustic life and old age. Did some of the dandyism of
the French dragoon survive in the old Philipsburgh farmer?

He carried a walking-stick in one hand, a lighted lantern in the
other. After bowing to the people in the hall, he set down his
lantern, closed the door and bolted it, then took up his lantern, blew
out the flame thereof, and set it down again.

"Whew!" he puffed, after his exertion. "Windy night, Miss Elizabeth!
Windy night, Major Colden! Winter's going to set in airly this year.
There ain't been sich a frosty November since '64, when the river was
froze over as fur down as Spuyten Duyvel."

There was in the old man's high-pitched voice a good deal of the
squeak, but little of the quaver, of senility.

"You'll stay to supper, I hope, Mr. Valentine."

From Elizabeth this was a sufficient exhibition of graciousness. She
then turned her back on the two men and began to tell her aunt of her
arrangements.

"Thankee, ma'am," said old Valentine, whose sight did not immediately
acquaint him, in the dim candle-light, with Elizabeth's change of
front; wherefore he continued, placidly addressing