father clung to, still, that the yesterdays that had lighted them the
way to dusty death had cast no glare on dishonored scutcheons seemed
clear, from the popular respect and traditional affection in which I
found that the name was still held in hamlet and homestead. It was
pleasant to see the veneration with which this small hidalgo of some
three hundred a-year was held, and the patriarchal affection with which
he returned it. Roland was a man who would walk into a cottage, rest
his cork leg on the hearth, and talk for the hour together upon all that
lay nearest to the hearts of the owners. There is a peculiar spirit of
aristocracy amongst agricultural peasants: they like old names and
families; they identify themselves with the honors of a house, as if of
its clan. They do not care so much for wealth as townsfolk and the
middle class do; they have a pity, but a respectful one, for well-born
poverty. And then this Roland, too,--who would go and dine in a
cookshop, and receive change for a shilling, and shun the ruinous luxury
of a hack cabriolet,--could be positively extravagant in his
liberalities to those around him. He was altogether another being in
his paternal acres. The shabby-genteel, half-pay captain, lost in the
whirl of London, here luxuriated into a dignified ease of manner that
Chesterfield might have admired. And if to please is the true sign of
politeness, I wish you could have seen the faces that smiled upon
Captain Roland as he walked down the village, nodding from side to side.

One day a frank, hearty old woman, who had known Roland as a boy, seeing
him lean on my arm, stopped us, as she said bluffly, to take a "geud
luik" at me.

Fortunately I was stalwart enough to pass muster, even in the eyes of a
Cumberland matron; and after a compliment at which Roland seemed much
pleased, she said to me, but pointing to the Captain,--