Pierre remembered, that when, one autumn, a hog was bought of him for the servants' hall at the mansion, the old man never called for his money till the midwinter following; and then, as with trembling fingers he eagerly clutched the silver, he unsteadily said, 'I have no use for it now; it might just as well have stood over.' It was then, that chancing to overhear this, Mrs. Glendinning had looked at the old man, with a kindly and benignantly interested eye to the povertiresque; and murmured, 'Ah! the old English Knight is not yet out of his blood. Bravo, old man!'
One day, in Pierre's sight, nine silent figures emerged from the door of old Millthorpe; a coffin was put into a neighbour's farm-wagon; and a procession, some thirty feet long, including the elongated pole and box of the wagon, wound along Saddle Meadows to a hill, where, at last, old Millthorpe was laid down in a bed, where the rising sun should affront him no more. Oh, softest and daintiest of Holland linen is the motherly earth! There, beneath the sublime tester of the infinite sky, like emperors and kings, sleep, in grand state, the beggars and paupers of earth! I joy that Death is this Democrat; and hopeless of all other real and permanent democracies, still hug the thought, that though in life some heads are crowned with gold, and some bound round with thorns, yet chisel them how they will, head-stones are all alike.
This somewhat particular account of the father of young Millthorpe, will better set forth the less immature condition and character of the son, on whom had now descended the maintenance of his mother and sisters. But, though the son of a farmer, Charles was peculiarly averse to hard labour. It was not impossible that by resolute hard labour he might eventually have succeeded in placing his family in a far more comfortable situation than he had ever remembered them. But it was not so
