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But after his son came to live with them, Mr Fleming gave up to him all that part of their affairs that would have taken him away from home. He was a born farmer; his forefathers had been farmers for as many generations as he could trace, and he had a hereditary reverence for mother earth as the giver of bread to man.
However we may explain it, whether by the easier passage of electricity through oak-wood than through any other timber, or in some other way, the fact itself may well have attracted the notice of our rude forefathers, who dwelt in the vast forests which then covered a large part of Europe; and they might naturally account for it in their simple religious way by supposing that the great sky-god, whom they worshipped and whose awful voice they heard in the roll of thunder, loved the oak above all the trees of the wood and often descended into it from the murky cloud in a flash of lightning, leaving a token of his presence or of his passage in the riven and blackened trunk and the blasted foliage.
He said that it had been won from a chief by his forefathers when the English first came into the land, and that it was the old Roman shape. It seemed unhandy to me, but I had no time to think of it for a moment, for now Cadwal had a last question. "Is this fight to be to the death?" "No," I answered; "else were the rule we made about the boundary of no use."
These first transports having subsided, they adjourned to the lodgings of Fathom, who soon recollected his spirits and invention so well as to amuse the other with a feigned tale of his having been taken by the French, sent prisoner into Champagne, from whence he had written many letters to Count Melvil and his son, of whom he could hear no tidings; of his having contracted an intimacy with a young nobleman of France, who died in the flower of his age, after having, in token of his friendship, bequeathed to him a considerable legacy; by this he had been enabled to visit the land of his forefathers in the character of a gentleman, which he had supported with some figure, until he was betrayed into a misfortune that exhausted his funds, and drove him to the spot where he was now found.
As its duties could be performed by the Senate without loss of dignity, and with pecuniary saving, its retention as a part of the body politic is due to the "let well enough alone" policy of the American citizen which has supplanted the militant, progressive democracy of his forefathers.
"Oh, keep coming that's right, keep coming!" answered the miserly old man, who still was not so miserly that he did not want his young wife blooming. "Coming to-morrow, eh!" he added, with something very like a sneer. The other had a sudden flash of fury pass through his veins. The old Celtic quickness to resent insult swept over him. The ire of his forefathers waked in him.
We met a number of farmers returning to their homes from a kind of fair that is annually held in the little metropolis; and as I watched the long caravan-like line of pack-horses and horsemen, wearily plodding over the stony waste in single file, I found it less difficult to believe that these remote islanders should be descended from Oriental forefathers.
On the wall hung a row of portraits, representing the forefathers of the Bellingham lineage, some with armor on their breasts, and others with stately ruffs and robes of peace.
The hearth is its altar, because the forefathers of the house lie buried under it, or for another reason. These forefathers certainly are its gods. This hearth-cult has for its priest the father of the family; he in his turn will be gathered to his fathers if he has a legitimate son to do the last rites for him.
The methods of carrying and keeping it alive were numerous and ingenious; a warming pan or iron pot would answer, if the distance was not too great. One of my forefathers awoke on a winter morning to find the ashes in the fireplace cold, and the nearest neighbor eight miles away. It was an impossible undertaking to keep a coal alive on a walk of eight miles.
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