“Lord love you, Master Martin,” said the old man as he entered, “I have heard of you:” here he took the offered hand, and bowed his head on it; then again looking up, resumed, “Well if it is not--yes,--no, well, I can’t make you out; why, how you are grown and altered! One thing’s right, I see,--you have not got your head clipped and shaved like a mule’s rump.” Here Peter caught a grave look on the face of his master, and added, “Well, truth’s best spoken out: I don’t like ’em, the knaves, and I’ve reasons as plenty as blackberries. Didn’t they come a horseback into the church at the christening, and throw over the Font; and has not that prick-eared, tallow-faced rogue, and no parson, stuck it into the ground in our poultry yard, near the muck-heap, for the ducks to dabble in? and didn’t they drive you out of house and home, and throw your furniture out of window, and offer it for sale in the street? and didn’t they burn your favourite old books, and break the old lute, and make you and mistress trudge half a winter’s night in the mire? and worse than all, haven’t they bewitched Master Cuthbert, and changed his nature like, and made him against his own kin and his own king? Rot’em! No rogue like your godly rogue, my old mother was wont to say:--all saint without, all devil within. There, love you, dear master, don’t scold with your eyes in that fashion: ’an old dog cannot alter his way of barking.’ Come, I’ve coughed it all out, and it has done me good, and now for salt and trenchers. I’ll warrant Master Martin has got hunger sauce for his supper.” Herewith he set about covering the low table with a white napkin and clean trenchers, and produced from the basket a small mutton ham and some fine heads of sweet lettuce, and a loaf of the best wheaten bread; and setting on one side a small keg of ale, stood up with a look of pride and joy at his master’s back, and said, “To God’s gift, God send a good appetite.” “How is this, Peter, whence is this?” asked old Noble. “Why, master, it is from old Mrs. Blount. Wasn’t her good man--‘peace to his soul!’--wasn’t he a church-tenant, and his father’s father before him? and was there a day of your life that you hadn’t a kind word for him? and does not she know that you have got a stout young trencher-man come to you and nothing to set before him?” “Well, well,--she is a warm-hearted woman, and always was. God reward her! but sit down, Peter: you and I are only fellow-labourers now; and if you did not handle the spade better than I do, we should not have fared half so well as we have hitherto:--make him sit down, wife.” “No,” said Peter, “’t was well enough sometimes o’ the long winter nights, when madam worked her needle-work and you were making nets, for old Peter to have a seat in the chimney-corner, and to hear your blessed voices, and take food from your own hands, and eat it by the same fire; but now, with Master Martin at home, we’ll soon have things right again.”