[1] The immense grants taken up by early patentees, in this country, justifies this language, which might otherwise seem an extravagant hyperbole. [2] _Cujus est solum, ejus est usque ad cœlum._ CHAPTER III. “An old worshipful gentleman, who had a great estate, That kept a brave old house at a bountiful rate,— With an old lady whose anger one word assuages,— Like an old courtier of the queen's, And the queen's old courtier.” _Old Ballad._ A pleasant home was that old Windsor Hall, with its broad fields in cultivation around it, and the dense virgin forest screening it from distant view, with the carefully shaven sward on the velvet lawn in front, and the tall forest poplars standing like sentries in front of the house, and the venerable old oak tree at the side, with the rural wooden bench beneath it, where Hansford and Virginia used to sit and dream of future happiness, while the tame birds were singing sweetly to their mates in the green branches above them. And the house, too, with its quaint old frame, its narrow windows, and its substantial furniture, all brought from England and put down here in this new land for the comfort of the loyal old colonist. It had been there for years, that old house, and the moss and lichen had fastened on its shelving roof, and the luxuriant vine had been trained to clamber closely by its sides, exposing its red trumpet flowers to the sun; while the gay humming-bird, with her pretty dress of green and gold, sucked their honey with her long bill, and fluttered her little wings in the mild air so swiftly that you could scarcely see them. Then there was that rude but comfortable old porch, destined to as many uses as the chest of drawers in the tavern of the Deserted Village. Protected by its sheltering roof alike from rain and sunshine, it was often used, in the mild summer weather, as a favorite sitting-room, and sometimes, too, converted into a dining-room. There, too, might be seen, suspended from the nails and wooden pegs driven into the locust pillars, long specimen ears of corn, samples of grain, and different garden seeds tied up in little linen bags; and in the strange medley, Mrs. Temple had hung some long strings of red pepper-pods, sovereign specifics in cases of sore throat, but which seemed, among so many objects of greater interest, to blush with shame at their own inferiority. It was not yet the season when the broad tobacco leaf, brown with the fire of curing, was exhibited, and formed the chief staple of conversation, as well as of trade, with the old crony planters. The wonderful plant was just beginning to suffer from the encroaches of the worm, the only animal, save man, which is life-proof against the deadly nicotine of this cultivated poison.