No one can ever say what the old man thought as he slammed the door after one of these walks and was alone with himself. Certainly he regretted the big decorous high-gated houses that used to stand opposite his, veiled by wistaria, passion flower and clematis; the limes that used to run the whole length of his father’s land, but now all gone, save this one (how lovely its fallen leaves looked in the as yet untrodden streets in autumn mornings, lying flat and moistly golden under the fog!); the balsam growing through the railings; the dark yew tree that looked among bright lilac and laburnum like a negro among the women in the _Arabian Nights_; the pathway through the churchyard, in the days before they had to rail it in to preserve the decent turf--in vain, for it was now littered with newspapers and tram-tickets among the tombs of ---- Esquire, ---- Esquire, for they were all esquires. He regretted the houses and gardens, but less than their people, the men and women of some ease and state, of speech whose kindliness was thrice kind through its careful dignity, so he thought. And then the children, there were no such children now; and the young men and women, the men a little alarming, the women strong and lovely and gentle enough to supply him with incarnations at once of all those whom he read of in the novels of Scott. They had gone long ago, except those who survived vaguely in the novels. He remembered their houses better, for it was not until after some years that they were pulled down, their orchards grubbed up, and their rich mould carried away in sacks to the trumpery villas round about--dragged along the road and spilt in a long black trail. It was wonderful dark mould, and the thought of the apples, the plums, the nectarines, the roses which had grown out of it made him furious when it was taken to their gardens by people who would be gone in a year or less, and would grow in it nothing but nasturtiums and sunflowers.