he hedges; still he went to his work. The
green summer foliage became brown and the acorns fell from the oaks; still
he laboured on, and saw the ice and snow, and heard the wind roar in the
old familiar trees without much thought of it. But those old familiar
trees, the particular hedges he had worked among so many years, the very
turf of the meadows over which he had walked so many times, the view down
the road from the garden gate, the distant sign-post and the red-bricked
farmhouse--all these things had become part of his life. There was no hope
nor joy left to him, but he wanted to stay on among them to the end. He
liked to ridge up his little plot of potatoes; he liked to creep up his
ladder and mend the thatch of his cottage; he liked to cut himself a
cabbage, and to gather the one small basketful of apples. There was a kind
of dull pleasure in cropping the elder hedge, and even in collecting the
dead branches scattered under the trees. To be about the hedges, in the
meadows, and along the brooks was necessary to him, and he liked to be at
work.

Three score and ten did not seem the limit of his working days; he still
could and would hoe--a bowed back is no impediment, but perhaps rather an
advantage, at that occupation. He could use a prong in the haymaking; he
could reap a little, and do good service tying up the cut corn. There were
many little jobs on the farm that required experience, combined with the
plodding patience of age, and these he could do better than a stronger
man. The years went round again, and yet he worked. Indeed, the farther
back a man's birth dates in the beginning of the present century the more
he seems determined to labour. He worked on till every member of his
family had gone, most to their last home, and still went out at times when
the weather was not too severe. He worked on, and pottered round the
garden, and watched the young green plums swelling on his trees, and did a
bit of gleaning, and thought the wheat would weigh bad when it was
threshed out.

Presently people began to bestir themselves, and to ask whether there was
no one to take care of the old man, who might die from age and none near.
Where were his own friends and relations? One strong son had enlisted and
gone to India, and though his time had expired long ago, nothing had ever
been heard of him. Another son had emigrated to Australia, and once sent
back a present of money, and a message, written for him by a friend, t