ttle
property), and led through it to a narrow stile, over which we passed
into some beautiful meadows, appertaining, as Hallings informed me, to
the Devereux Hall estate, three of them only intervening between his own
little territory and the old mansion-house, or rather the site where it
had stood. "Ay," continued the old man, in a low under-tone, half
communing with himself, and half addressing me,--"Ay, so it is--to think
what changes I have lived to see! The Hall down in the dust before its
time, and that hard man's house raised (as one may say) upon its ruins!
Blessed be the kind master who provided for his old servants' age, and
secured to _them_ the shelter of their humble roof-tree, before
misfortune fell on his own grey hairs, and would have made him houseless
at fourscore years and upward, had he lived a few weeks longer!
But--but--God is merciful!----" The old man devoutly aspirated after the
abrupt pause, accompanied with a sort of inward shudder, which preceded
those pious words; and he spoke no more during the remainder of our
walk.

A shade of peculiar solemnity passed over my friend's countenance, as
Hallings concluded his brief soliloquy, and both of them became so
profoundly silent, sympathetically affected as it seemed by the same
shuddering recollections, that the infection partly extended itself to
me, ignorant as I was of the particular circumstances of their painful
retrospect, and the words died on my lips as I was about to inquire
Hallings' meaning in alluding to the "hard man, whose house had been
raised on the ruins of his master's." I could not for worlds have broken
into the sacredness of their silent thoughts; so, without further
interchange of words, we quietly pursued our pleasant path, till it
brought us to a boundary of thick hazel copse, across a stile, and over
a rustic bridge, which spanned a little trout-stream just glancing
between the boughs of over-arching alders, to a green door in a high
holly hedge. While Hallings stept before us to undo the temporary
fastening with which the workmen had secured it for the night, my
friend, aroused from his fit of abstraction, said, pointing to the
hedge, "I remember the time when that verdant wall, now straggling into
wild luxuriance, was as trimly kept as were those of Sayes Court, before
the barbarous sport of Evelyn's imperial guest destroyed his labour of
years. Neglect is making progress here, destructive as that royal havoc,
though mo