, and had had two steps built up against a wall in
the kitchen garden on which he used to stand and watch the sun go down
whenever it was clear. My father came on him in the afternoon, just as
the sun was setting, and saw him with his arms resting on the top of the
wall looking towards the sun over a field through which there was a path
on which my father was. My father heard him say "Good-bye, sun; good-
bye, sun," as the sun sank, and saw by his tone and manner that he was
feeling very feeble. Before the next sunset he was gone.

There was no dole. Some of his grandchildren were brought to the funeral
and we remonstrated with them, but did not take much by doing so. John
Pontifex, who was a year older than I was, sneered at penny loaves, and
intimated that if I wanted one it must be because my papa and mamma could
not afford to buy me one, whereon I believe we did something like
fighting, and I rather think John Pontifex got the worst of it, but it
may have been the other way. I remember my sister's nurse, for I was
just outgrowing nurses myself, reported the matter to higher quarters,
and we were all of us put to some ignominy, but we had been thoroughly
awakened from our dream, and it was long enough before we could hear the
words "penny loaf" mentioned without our ears tingling with shame. If
there had been a dozen doles afterwards we should not have deigned to
touch one of them.

George Pontifex put up a monument to his parents, a plain slab in Paleham
church, inscribed with the following epitaph:--

SACRED TO THE MEMORY

OF

JOHN PONTIFEX

WHO WAS BORN AUGUST 16TH,

1727, AND DIED FEBRUARY 8, 1812,

IN HIS 85TH YEAR,

AND OF

RUTH PONTIFEX, HIS WIFE,

WHO WAS BORN OCTOBER 13, 1727, AND DIED JANUARY 10, 1811,

IN HER 84TH YEAR.

THEY WERE UNOSTENTATIOUS BUT EXEMPLARY

IN THE DISCHARGE OF THEIR

RELIGIOUS, MORAL, AND SOCIAL DUTIES.

THIS MONUMENT WAS PLACED

BY THEIR ONLY SON.

CHAPTER IV

In a year or two more came Waterloo and the European peace. Then Mr
George Pontifex went abroad more than once. I remember seeing at
Battersby in after years the diary which he kept on the first of these
occasions. It is a characteristic document. I felt as I read it that
the author before starting had made up his mind to admire only what he
thought it would be creditable in him to admire, to look at nature and
art only through the spectacles that had been handed down to him by
gener