Yet briskly enough for his years did the octogenarian walk in through the little pillared portico a moment later. Such deliberation as his movements had might as well have been the mark of a proper self-esteem as the effect of age. He was a slender but wiry-looking old gentleman, was Matthias Valentine, of Valentine's Hill; in appearance a credit to the better class of countrymen of his time. His white hair was tied in a cue, as if he were himself a landowner instead of only a manorial tenant. Yet no common tenant was he. His father, a dragoon in the French service, had come down from Canada and settled on Philipse Manor, and Matthias had been proprietor of Valentine's Hill, renting from the Philipses in earlier days than any one could remember. His grandsons now occupied the Hill, and the old man was in the full enjoyment of the leisure he had won. His rather sharp countenance, lighted by honest gray eyes, was a mixture of good-humor, childlike ingenuousness, and innocent jocosity. The neatness of his hair, his carefully shaven face, and the whole condition of his brown cloth coat and breeches and worsted stockings, denoted a fastidiousness rarely at any time, and particularly in the good (or bad) old days, to be found in common with rustic life and old age. Did some of the dandyism of the French dragoon survive in the old Philipsburgh farmer? He carried a walking-stick in one hand, a lighted lantern in the other. After bowing to the people in the hall, he set down his lantern, closed the door and bolted it, then took up his lantern, blew out the flame thereof, and set it down again. "Whew!" he puffed, after his exertion. "Windy night, Miss Elizabeth! Windy night, Major Colden! Winter's going to set in airly this year. There ain't been sich a frosty November since '64, when the river was froze over as fur down as Spuyten Duyvel." There was in the old man's high-pitched voice a good deal of the squeak, but little of the quaver, of senility. "You'll stay to supper, I hope, Mr. Valentine." From Elizabeth this was a sufficient exhibition of graciousness. She then turned her back on the two men and began to tell her aunt of her arrangements. "Thankee, ma'am," said old Valentine, whose sight did not immediately acquaint him, in the dim candle-light, with Elizabeth's change of front; wherefore he continued, placidly addressing her back: "I wouldn't mind a glass and a pipe with friend Williams afore trudging back to the Hill." He then walked over to the disconsolate Colden, and, with a very gay-doggish expression, remarked in an undertone: "Fine pair o' girls yonder, major?" He had known Colden from the time of the latter's first boyhood visits to the manor, and could venture a little familiarity. "Girls?" blurted the major, startled out of his meditations. The old country beau chuckled. "We all know what's betwixt you and the niece. How about the aunt and me taking a lesson from you two, eh?"