While still, to every woodland vale, New blooms, new fruits, the seasons bring, For other eyes and lips to hail With looks and sounds of welcoming: As where some stream light-eddying roves By sunny meads and shadowy groves, Wave following wave departs for ever, But still flows on the eternal river. [Illustration: _Mr. Forester made inquiries of him._] An old man approached them, in whom they observed that look of healthy and cheerful antiquity which showed that time only, and neither pain nor sickness, had traced wrinkles on his cheek. Mr. Forester made inquiries of him on the object he had most at heart: but the old man could give no gleam of light to guide his steps. Mr. Fax then asked some questions concerning the mansion before them. ‘Ah, zur!’ said the old man, ‘this be the zeat o’ Squire Openhand: but he doan’t live here now; the house be growed too large vor’n, as one may zay. I remember un playing about here on the grass-plot, when he was half as high as the sun-dial poast, as if it was but yesterday. The days that I ha’ zeed here! Rare doings there used to be wi’ the house vull o’ gentlevolks zometimes to be zure: but what he loiked best was, to zee a merry-making of all his tenants, round the great oak that stands there in the large vield by himzelf. He used to zay if there was anything he could not abide it was the zight of a zorrowful feace; and he was always prying about to voind one: and if he did voind one, Lord bless you! it was not a zorrowful feace long, if it was anything that he could mend. Zo he lived to the length of his line, as the zaying is; and when times grew worse, it was a hard matter to draw in; howsomdever he did; and when the tax-gatherers came every year vor more and more, and the peaper-money flew about, buying up everything in the neighbourhood; and every vifty pounds he got in peaper wasn’t worth, as he toald me, vorty pounds o’ real money, why there was every year fewer horses in his steable, and less wine on his board: and every now and then came a queer zort o’ chap dropped out o’ the sky like—a vundholder he called un—and bought a bit of ground vor a handvul o’ peaper, and built a cottage horny, as they call it—there be one there on the hill-zide—and had nothing to do wi’ the country people, nor the country people wi’ he: nothing in the world to do, as we could zee, but to eat and drink, and make little bits o’ shrubberies, o’ quashies, and brutuses, and zelies, and cubies, and filigrees, and ruddydunderums, instead o’ the oak plantations the old landlords used to plant; and the Squire could never abide the zight o’ one o’ they gimcrack boxes; and all the while he was nailing up a window or two every year, and his horses were going one way, and his dogs another, and his old zervants were zent away, one by one, wi’ heavy hearts, poor souls, and at last it came that he could not