William Dewy — otherwise grandfather William — was now about seventy; yet an ardent¹ vitality² still preserved a warm and roughened bloom upon his face, which reminded gardeners of the sunny side of a ripe ribstone-pippin; though a narrow strip of forehead, that was protected from the weather by lying above the line of his hat-brim, seemed to belong to some town man, so gentlemanly was its whiteness. His was a humorous and kindly³ nature, not unmixed with a frequent melancholy⁴; and he had a firm religious faith. But to his neighbours he had no character in particular. If they saw him pass by their windows when they had been bottling off old mead⁵, or when they had just been called long-headed men who might do anything in the world if they chose, they thought concerning him, “Ah, there’s that good-hearted man — open as a child!” If they saw him just after losing a shilling or half-a-crown, or accidentally letting fall a piece of crockery, they thought, “There’s that poor weak-minded man Dewy again! Ah, he’s never done much in the world either!” If he passed when fortune neither smiled nor frowned on them, they merely thought him old William Dewy.

“Ah, so’s — here you be! — Ah, Michael and Joseph and John — and you too, Leaf! a merry Christmas all! We shall have a rare log-wood fire directly, Reub, to reckon by the toughness of the job I had in cleaving⁷ ’em.” As he spoke⁸ he threw down an armful of logs which fell in the chimney-corner with a rumble⁹, and looked at them with something of the admiring enmity he would have bestowed¹⁰ on living people who had been very

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