a white hand fit for no sterner toil than to
flourish with airy grace a gold-headed cane; ladies with gleaming bare
shoulders, dressed in "cumbrous silk that with its rustling made proud
the flesh that bore it!" The imaginative listener could almost
distinguish these footfalls, as the blind will recognize the tread of
an unseen person.

To further add to the land baron's dissatisfaction over his heritage,
"rent-day"--that all-important day in the olden times; when my lord's
door had been besieged by the willing lease-holders, cheerful in
rendering unto Caesar what was due Caesar!--seemed to have been
dropped from the modern calendar, as many an ancient holiday has
gradually been lost in the whirligig of time. No long procession now
awaited the patroon's pleasure, when it should suit him to receive the
tribute of guilders, corn or meal; the day might have been as obsolete
as an Hellenic festival day to Zeus, for all the observance it was
accorded.

"Your notices, Scroggs, were wasted on the desert air," said the
patroon, grimly, to that disappointed worthy. "What's the use of
tenants who don't pay? Playing at feudal lord in modern times is a
farce, Scroggs. I wish we had lived about four hundred years ago."

"Yes, if four hundred years ago were now," assented the parasite, "I'd
begin with Dick, the tollman! He's a regular Goliath and,"--his face
becoming purple--"when I threatened him with the law, threw me out of
the barn on an obnoxious heap of refuse."

"You weren't exactly a David, then?" laughed the patroon, in spite of
his bad humor.

"I'll throw the stone yet," said the little man, viciously showing his
yellow teeth. "The law's the sling."

That evening, when the broad meadows were inundated by the shadow of
the forest that crept over it like an incoming tide, the land baron
ordered lights for every room. The manor shone in isolated grandeur
amid the gloomy fields, with the forest-wall around it; radiant as of
old, when strains of music had been heard within and many figures
passed the windows. But now there was light, and not life, and a
solitary anti-renter on the lonely road regarded with surprise the
unusual illumination.

"What does it mean?" asked Little Thunder--for it was he--waiting and
watching, as without the gates of Paradise.

Well might he ask, for the late Mynheer, the Patroon, had been a
veritable bat for darkness; a few candles answered his purpose in the
spacious rooms; he played the p