ute. "Why," said he, "there's the knocker; it
has tumbled down." It had dropped from the door as the screws rusted;
the door itself was propped up with a log of wood. But one thing only
appeared to have been attended to, and that was the wall about the
orchard, which showed traces of recent mortar, and the road leading
towards it, which had not long since been mended with flints.

Now Bevis, as I say, noting all these things as they came near with his
eyes, which, like gimlets, went through everything, was continually
asking his papa questions about them, and why everything was in such a
state, till at last his papa, overwhelmed with his inquiries, promised
to tell him the whole story when they got home. This he did, but while
they are now fastening up the horse (for there was no one to help them
or mind it), and while Bevis is picking up the rusty knocker, the story
may come in here very well:--

Once upon a time, many, many years ago, when the old gentleman was
young, and lived with his mother at the farmhouse, it happened that he
fell in love. The lady he loved was very young, very beautiful, very
proud, very capricious, and very poor. She lived in a house in the
village little better than a cottage, with an old woman who was said to
be her aunt. As the young farmer was well off, for the land was his own,
and he had no one to keep but his old mother, and as the young lady
dearly loved him, there seemed no possible obstacle in their way. But it
is well known that a brook can never run straight, and thus, though all
looked so smooth, there were, in reality, two difficulties.

The first of these was the farmer's old mother, who having been mistress
in the farmhouse for very nearly fifty years, did not like, after
half-a-century, to give place to a mere girl. She could not refrain from
uttering disparaging remarks about her, to which her son, being fond of
his mother, could not reply, though it angered him to the heart, and at
such times he used to take down his long single-barrelled gun with brass
fittings, and go out shooting. More than once the jealous mother had
insulted the young lady openly in the village street, which conduct, of
course, as things fly from roof to roof with the sparrows, was known all
over the place, and caused the lady to toss her head like a filly in
spring to show that she did not care for such an old harridan, though in
secret it hurt her pride beyond expression.

So great was the difficult