It was in this village that I met my peasant. He was not a man easy to pick acquaintance with, for he mingled little among the gossips of the place. Never once did I see him at the village inn or in church. He lived apart in a little cottage near the Warwick end of the village, with his wife and a little lass of ten or eleven summers--his granddaughter. I often met him in the early morning going to market with his baskets of vegetables, or in the cool of the evening, when he would go out with his little girl skipping and dancing by his side. And the very first time I saw him he awakened in me a strong interest. There was something striking in his aspect--a still calm was on his face, and at the same time a hardness lay about the mouth, and in the wrinkles around the eyes, which was almost repellant. His figure had been above the middle height; and although now bent and gaunt-looking, had still an aspect of calm energy and decayed strength. But what struck me most was the grand, almost majestic outline of his profile, and the keenness of his yet undimmed eye, which flashed from beneath grey shaggy eyebrows with a light that entered one's soul. The face was thoroughly English in type, with features singularly regular, the forehead broad, the nose aquiline, the chin large; and still in old age round and clean and full, though the cheeks had fallen in and the mouth had become drawn and hard. Had one met this man in "society," dressed in correct evening costume, surrounded by courtly dames in half-dress, one would have been struck by the individuality of that grand, grey face. Meanly clad, bent, and leaning on a common oaken staff, the face and figure of this old peasant were such as once looked at could not be easily forgotten. This also was a man with a soul in him; ay, and with a heart too; for does not his eye rest with an inexpressibly sad tenderness on the slim girl by his side when she interrupts his reverie with the eager query, "Grand-dad, grand-dad! Oh look at this poor dead bird in the path; who could have killed it?"