He was, indeed, altogether a very grave and serious looking personage, with much mildness and benevolence as well as sagacity in his countenance; and yet there was a certain slight turn of the lip, an occasional twinkle of the eye, and a drawing up of the nostril, which seemed to indicate the slightest possible touch of a sarcastic spirit, which had, perhaps, at an earlier period been more unruly, though it was now chastened by the cares, the sorrows, the anxieties, and the experience of life. He walked up and down, then, upon the terrace for some minutes, each time he turned, whether at the one end or the other, gazing down the course of the stream between the slopes of the hills towards the spot where the road from London crossed the valley, and then again bending his eyes upon the ground in meditation. Occasionally, however, he would look up to the sky, or down into the bowling-green; and, after one of the latter contemplations, he descended a flight of four stone steps which led down to the greensward, with the same calm and sedate step which had distinguished his promenade above; and taking up the large, round, wooden ball which lay on the grass, he held it in his hand for a moment, and then bowled it deliberately at a set of skittles which had remained standing at the other end of the green. The ball hit the pin at which it was aimed, which in its fall overthrew a number of others, while the gentleman whose hand had despatched the messenger of mischief on its errand, looked on with a grave smile. There was evidently something more in the expression of his countenance than mere amusement at seeing the heavy pieces of wood tumble over one another, and he murmured to himself as he turned away,---- "Thus it is with human projects--ay, the best intended and most firmly founded; some accidental stroke overthrows one of our moral ninepins, and down go the whole nine!" So saying, he returned to the terrace, and raising his voice he cried, "Lakyn, Lakyn!" upon which a stout old serving-man, with a badge upon his arm, came out unbonneted to receive his master's commands. "Take away those ninepins, Lakyn," said the gentleman, "they have no business on the bowling-green; and put the bowls, too, under shelter. It will rain before morning." "God bless your worship," replied the servant, looking up to the sky, "you are as weatherwise as a conjuror." "Or a shepherd," replied the gentleman, resuming his walk; and the old man proceeded to gather up the implements of the good old game of our ancestors, muttering to himself, "Who would have thought it would rain before morning with such a sky as that. He knows more than other men, that's certain." While he was busy with the bowls, his master's eye, glancing down again as before to the spot where the road and the stream met, rested on the figure of a single horseman coming from the direction of London.