CALEB GALIGRAPH. 437 



It was a tempestuous winter's evening : the sleety rain came 

 every now and then pattering against the casement, and falling 

 in hissing drops upon the thirsty flames ; and when the showers 

 remitted of their battering violence, we only heard more plainly 

 the howl of the east wind in the tops of the old fir-trees round 

 the house, and the creaking of a rusty weathercock on an 

 adjacent dove-cot, with the sharp gallop of a hurried horse upon 

 the hard high road, followed by the angry bark of our house- 

 dog Keeper ; but of all these varied sounds, nearest and most 

 distinct, and diverting speedily our attention from them all, was 

 the chirp of a cricket from between the bricks of the glowing 

 hearth. 



Presently there came a sound of foot-scraping at the kitchen 

 back door, which opened and gave entrance to a gust of east 

 wind, and to Caleb Caligraph, returned from seeing that the 

 visitors' horses had been, like their masters, hospitably enter- 

 tained. 



Having rid himself of hat, great-coat, and lantern, Caleb 

 joined our company by deposit of his stiff ungainly figure in his 

 own arm-chair, in which, by the way, he never seemed to take 

 his ease ; not, however, till he had duly recognized our presence 

 by two separate inclinations of his queer, incomplete-shaped 

 head, inclinations of two-fold character, half, bows of respect 

 to his master's daughter and master's nephew, half, nods of 

 patronage to the children he had known from infancy, to whom 

 he had imparted, or was imparting, of the art and mystery of 

 penmanship and figures, and to whom, above all, he had given 

 presents, the annual present, that is, at Christmas, on the 

 exact anniversary we commemorate, of a king and queen of gilt 

 gingerbread. 



When our party of four was finally arranged, Mr. Caleb in 

 his arm-chair on one side of the fire, Mrs. Dove presiding over 

 her tea-board opposite, we, their guests, in intermediate places 

 by the table, my little cousin began to relate how we had seen 

 the cricket, and to repeat, with a little of my prompting, a few 



s s 



