The only comfort that the old squire has in the case is talking of the fellow's low origin. "Only to think," says he, "that this fellow's father hadn't even wood enough to make a wheel-barrow till my family helped him; and I have seen this scoundrel himself scraping manure in the high roads, before he went to the village school in the morning, with his toes peeping out of his shoes, and his shirt hanging like a rabbit's tail out of his ragged trowsers; and now the puppy talks of 'my carriage,' and 'my footman,' and says that 'he and _his lady purpose_ to spend the winter in _the_ town,' meaning London!" Wagstaff laughs at the squire's little criticism on Abel Grundy, and shakes his head; but he can not shake the chagrin out of the old gentleman's heart. Abel Grundy's upstart greatness will be the death of the OLD SQUIRE. * * * * * THE YOUNG SQUIRE. By smiling fortune blessed With large demesnes, hereditary wealth. SOMERVILLE. The Old Squire and the Young Squire are the antipodes of each other. They are representatives of two entirely different states of society in this country; the one, but the vestige of that which has been; the other, the full and perfect image of that which is. The old squires are like the last fading and shriveled leaves of autumn that yet hang on the tree. A few more days will pass; age will send one of his nipping nights, and down they will twirl, and be swept away into the oblivious hiding-places of death, to be seen no more. But the young squire is one of the full-blown blossoms of another summer. He is flaunting in the sunshine of a state of wealth and luxury, which we, as our fathers in their days did, fancy can by no possibility be carried many degrees farther, and yet we see it every day making some new and extraordinary advance.