As the old man looks back from the gate, the chill breeze whistles through the boughs of the oak above him, tearing off the brown dry leaves, and shaking out the acorns to fall at his feet.

It lifts his grey hair, and penetrates the threadbare coat.

As he turns to go, something catches his eye on the ground, and from the mud in the gateway he picks up a cast horse-shoe.

With the rusty iron in his hand he passes slowly down the lane, and, as he goes, the bitter wind drives the fallen leaves that have been lying beside the way rustling and dancing after him.
From a farmer occupying a good-sized farm he had descended to be a farmer's bailiff in the same locality.

But a few months since he was himself a tenant, and now he is a bailiff at 15_s_.