act of its
satisfying neither, was kept up the more rigidly; on the one side
from a morbid conscience, which reiterated its monitions against
the dictates of the natural heart; on the other, out of respect and
timidity.

Grandfather Warren was a little, lean, leather-colored man. His head
was habitually bent, his eyes cast down; but when he raised them to
peer about, their sharpness and clear intelligence gave his face
a wonderful vitality. He chafed his small, well-shaped hands
continually; his long polished nails clicked together with a shelly
noise, like that which beetles make flying against the ceiling. His
features were delicate and handsome; gentle blood ran in his veins,
as I have said. All classes in Barmouth treated him with invariable
courtesy. He was aboriginal in character, not to be moved by
antecedent or changed by innovation--a Puritan, without gentleness or
tenderness. He scarcely concealed his contempt for the emollients
of life, or for those who needed them. He whined over no misfortune,
pined for no pleasure. His two sons, who broke loose from him, went
into the world, lived a wild, merry life, and died there, he never
named. He found his wife dead by his side one morning. He did not go
frantic, but selected a text for the funeral sermon; and when he stood
by the uncovered grave, took off his hat and thanked his friends for
their kindness with a loud, steady voice. Aunt Mercy told me that
after her mother's death his habit of chafing his hands commenced;
it was all the difference she saw in him, for he never spoke of his
trouble or acknowledged his grief by sign or word.

Though he had been frugal and industrious all his life, he had no more
property than the old, rambling house we lived in, and a long, narrow
garden attached to it, where there were a few plum and quince trees, a
row of currant bushes, Aunt Mercy's beds of chamomile and sage, and a
few flowers. At the end of the garden was a peaked-roof pigsty; it
was cleanly kept, and its inhabitant had his meals served with the
regularity which characterized all that Grandfather Warren did.
Beautiful pigeons lived in the roof, and were on friendly terms with
the occupant on the lower floor. The house was not unpicturesque. It
was built on a corner, facing two streets. One front was a story high,
with a slanting roof; the other, which was two-storied, sloped like
a giraffe's back, down to a wood-shed. Clean cobwebs hung from its
rafters, and neat