"Fifty years at least," said Esther.

They continued to gaze with unwondering calmness and quiet interest, as
the dream (if such it were) unrolled its quaint and motley semblance
before them, and their notice was now attracted by several little knots
of people apparently engaged in conversation. Of these one of the
earliest collected and most characteristic was near the tavern, the
persons who composed it being seated on the low green bank along the
left side of the door. A conspicuous figure here was a fine corpulent
old fellow in his shirt-sleeves and flame-colored breeches, and with a
stained white apron over his paunch, beneath which he held his hands and
wherewith at times be wiped his ruddy face. The stately decrepitude of
one of his companions, the scar of an Indian tomahawk on his crown, and
especially his worn buff coat, were appropriate marks of a veteran
belonging to an old Provincial garrison, now deaf to the roll-call.
Another showed his rough face under a tarry hat and wore a pair of wide
trousers, like an ancient mariner who bad tossed away his youth upon the
sea, and was returned, hoary and weather-beaten, to his inland home.
There was also a thin young man, carelessly dressed, who ever and anon
cast a sad look towards the pale maiden above mentioned. With these
there sat a hunter, and one or two others, and they were soon joined by
a miller, who came upward from the dusty mill, his coat as white as if
besprinkled with powdered starlight. All these (by the aid of jests,
which might indeed be old, but had not been recently repeated) waxed
very merry, and it was rather strange, that just as their sides shook
with the heartiest laughter, they appeared greatly like a group of
shadows flickering in the moonshine. Four personages, very different
from these, stood in front of the large house with its periwig of
creeping plants. One was a little elderly figure, distinguished by the