"I have not taken _my own last_ look, sir," was the touching and unanswerable reply; "and that I was minded, please God, to take, when all the workmen had left the place, and I could stand and look my fill at the crumbling wall, without being distracted by their noises, or scoffed at belike for giving way to an old man's weakness. But my master's friend will make allowance for his old servant, and it will do me good to go with you, sir."
We both felt that he was right; that, as he expressed it, it _would do him good_ to take that "last look," accompanied by one who could so fully sympathise in all his feelings, and to whom he could pour out his full heart with the garrulous simplicity of age, and of a sorrow, heart-seated truly, but _not_ "too deep for tears." So he was allowed to secure our steeds in an adjoining cowshed, while we talked with Celia on the subject that day uppermost in her thoughts also; and having calculated with her that the nearly full moon would be up by our return, to light us on our homeward way, we left her standing on the threshold of the back door of her cottage, and followed her husband down the garden path which opened into a small orchard (a portion of his little property), and led through it to a narrow stile, over which we passed into some beautiful meadows, appertaining, as Hallings informed me, to the Devereux Hall estate, three of them only intervening between his own little territory and the old mansion-house, or rather the site where it had stood. "Ay," continued the old man, in a low under-tone, half communing with himself, and half addressing me,--"Ay, so it is--to think what changes I have lived to see! The Hall down in the dust before its time, and that hard man's house raised (as one may say) upon its ruins! Blessed be the kind master who provided for his old servants' age, and secured to _them_ the shelter of their humble roof-tree, before misfortune fell on his own grey hairs, and would have made him houseless at fourscore years and upward, had he lived a few weeks longer! But--but--God is merciful!----" The old man devoutly aspirated after the abrupt pause, accompanied with a sort of inward shudder, which preceded those pious words; and he spoke no more during the remainder of our walk.