The Lisgards had ever been a free-handed race, as generous out of doors as hospitable within; and their influence for good had been felt for generations throughout the village. I do not say that they expected no repayment; their rule was paternal, and they looked for something like filial obedience in return. If a villager had passed any member of that august family without pulling his hair, as though it were a bell-handle, in token of respect, it would have been considered a sign of revolution, and they would have congratulated themselves that the yeomanry were in a state of efficiency. The feudal system was still in vogue at Mirk, but tempered not only by excellent beef-tea in sickness, and port wine from the Abbey cellar during convalescence, but by the best Gothic architecture, as applied to cottages. If eleven human beings did sometimes sleep in a single room, and the domestic arrangements were inferior to those which Mr Chifney of the Farm provided for his race-horses, the tenement looked outside very picturesque, as seen from the Abbey windows. Nay, it must be owned that even this inconvenience of overcrowding was rare in the home-village, in comparison with other places on the Lisgard estate, not so near the family seat, about which everything was in externals, at least, becomingly spick and span. Dr Haldane, indeed, who had property of his own, and could afford to entertain political opinions at variance with those in favour at the Abbey, had been of old accustomed irreverently to adapt a certain popular nursery ballad to the state of things at Mirk. Who built the infant school so red? Who set that striking-clock o'erhead, To tell us all the time for bed? The Lisgards. Who made, and at such great expense, Around our pond that iron fence, To keep the pigs and boys from thence? The Lisgards, &c.