years almost a
personal _fac-simile_ of him, even to the cut and colour of his coat,
wig, everything; and being a fine specimen of a "noble peasant,"
externally as well as internally, his assumption of the _squire_ in
costume well became his tall figure, mild countenance, (streaked with
the lingering pink of his youthful bloom,) and gentle demeanour. A rigid
observer might have thought, that to this indulgent but indolent master
the poor steward owed his ruin; his habits of "forgiving" his tenants
their rent debts so often, having extended themselves to the former,
further increased by the strange inattention of the new landlord. The
gratitude of Bevan was, however, deserved--for never was a kinder
master.

"It is a thing not to be thought," he said, while returning with the
man, "that I shall ever come back here, to the old church again, alive
or dead; seeing that I am too poor for any one to bring my old bones all
the way from Cardigan, to put them in the same ground with _his_, as I
did dream of in my better days, and too old for a man used to free air
and the hill-sides all his life, to live long in a prison, or indeed out
of one--but we must all die. I assure you, my honest man and kind, you
have done me good, in mind and body, by letting me take leave of his
honour! Well I may call him so, now he is in heaven, whom I did honour
when here, from my very heart of hearts; kind he was to me--a second
father to my child--God bless him! Sure I am, if he were still among us,
how his good heart would melt, how it would _bleed_ for us--for _her_--I
_know_ it would." Here the old man sobbed and kept silence a space, then
proceeded--"You see how weak old age and over-love of this world make a
man, sir. Yet I am content. Next to God, I owe to him whose dear corpse
I have just now been so near, a long and happy life,--thanks, thanks,
thanks! To both, up yonder, I do here render them from my inmost soul;"
and he bared his head again, looking up to the placid moon with a visage
of kindred placidity, and an eye of blue lustre, so brightened by his
emotion as almost to be likened to the heaven in which that moon shone.
"Why should I repine, or fear the walls of a prison, as my passage to
that wide glorious world without wall or bound or end, where I hope to
live free and for ever, in the sight of my Redeemer, and, perhaps, of
him who was Hugh Fitzarthur, Esq., of Tallylynn hall, when here? I hope
I am not irreverent, but in truth,