page 8

Rest

The calmness of the day, the blue of the sky, and the dimness of the library led us to seek sunshine of the library led us to seek sunshine, and our steps wandered to the old cemetery. There was a calm silence, different from the fretful silence we had just left. A bird was singing somewhere; everything seemed to deny that it was still winter. It was while we were reading the inscription on an old stone that we heard his voice just below.

"Have you decided what you'll have on yours?" he asked.

"I'm going to have comfortable seats round the edge for one thing," I told him.

He laughed, and stooped again to his work. He was small and slight, and very old. He wore a pointed beard, iron-grey. The face above was ruddy and the eyes bright and young. He was cutting the grass round the graves with a sickle. After a moment he looked up and seeing that we were still there he spoke again.

"There's this written on a tombstone in Welford churchyard:

Here lies the body of Thomas Rollup,
The Lord saw fit to take his soul up,
But left his body to fill this hole up.

That's in Welford,' Warwickshire. 'Tis spelled 'Welford,' but most folks say it 'Welvurd.' "

"Are you a Warwickshire man?" I asked, thinking of his slow, broad speech.

"Aye. I lived twelve miles from Strat-ford-on-Avonshore, where that chap Shakes peare lived. I've seen his grave inside the church there. 'Tis just by the altar rail, and there's this written over him:

Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear
To dig the dust enclosed here;
Blessed be the man that spares these stones,
And cursed be he that moves my bones.

He wrote that himself. I'II beat he never thought they'd use it for his own grave," he added with a chuckle.

There was a pause while the sickle made a few more strokes. He had in some way an air of unreality about him. The town, the harbout, the distant hills, the people hurrying up the hill—these had no part in his world. A sad task, you would say, tending the dead. But it had not made him sad.

"There's a good view up here," he said then with a glance at the grey stones, "but you earns it."

"I've just thought o' what was written on the greave of a man as must have been very amiable :

Here lies the body of Thomas Lowe,
Where he's gone, I don't know;
Where he is and how he fares,
Nobody knows and nobody cares.
If to the realms of peace and love,
Good-bye happiness above;
If haply to some lower level.
We can't congratulate the devil.

He must ha' been a very amiable man, eh?"

"This is a quiet place," my friend said.

"A great place for swotting," I added.

"Aye, and a fine place for drinking," put in the old man. "there's many an empty bottle about here, but you never finds a full one! That reminds me o' another of Shakespeare's things. One night he'd been out on the spree with some of his friends, and the next day he was feeling like you do—you know. So when his friends came round and wanted his to go out again he said : 'No, I've done with

Piping Pebworth, dancing Marston,
Haunted Hilbrough, hungry Grafton,
Dodging Exhall, papist Wixford,
Beggary Broom, and drunken Bidford.

Sometimes I remembers," he added slowly, "and sometimes I forgets." The talk then turned on politics.

"'Twould a' taught the people as is in now a great lesson if they'd a' been put out last elections; about them, and 'twould a' taught them as is out a great lesson if they'd a' been put in. There'd be less o' their talking now. Politicians are like water-pipes," he said with a little shake of his head, "full, but of a very weak mixture."

There was that shining in his eyes that denotes real pleasure as he filled his pipe from the tobacco my friend had given him.

"Better to smoke here than hereafter," he said. "Good-day to you."

We turned away, feeling glad, not so much for the quaint things he had said, but rather for having shared for a moment the atmosphere of peace and security that was about him.

—Swan