lame, while it still burns steady, and not sowse it
In a sweel of melted tallow.

JUDITH:
Ay, but it's sad
When the wits go first.

BELL:
And he, so wried and geyzened,
The undertakers couldn't strake him rightly.
Even when they'd nailed him down, and we were watching
By candle-light, the night before the funeral,
Nid-nodding, Michael and I, just as the clock
Struck twelve, there was a crack that brought us to,
Bolt-upright, as the coffin lid flew off:
And old granddaddy sat up in his shroud.

JUDITH:
God save us, woman! Whatever did ...

BELL:
I fancied
He'd popped up to say fifty: but he dropped back
With knees to chin. They'd got to screw him down:
And they'd sore work to get him underground--
Snow overnight had reached the window-sill:
And when, at length, the cart got on the road,
The coffin was jolted twice into the drifts,
Before they'd travelled the twelve-mile to the church-yard:
And the hole they'd howked for him, chockful of slush:
And the coffin slipt with a splash into the sluther.
Ay--we see life at Krindlesyke, God help us!

JUDITH:
A fearsome end.

BELL:
Little to choose, 'twixt ends.
So, Michael's granddad, and your girl's, went home
To his forefathers, and theirs--both Barrasfords:
Though I'd guess your bairn's a gentler strain: yet mine's
No streak of me. All Barrasford, I judged him:
But, though he's Ezra's stubbornness, he's naught
Of foxy Peter: and grows more like Eliza,
I'd fancy: though I never kenned her, living:
I only saw her, dead.

JUDITH:
Eliza, too?

BELL:
I was the first to look on her dead face,
The morn I came: if she'd but lived a day--
Just one day longer, she'd have let me go.
No living woman could have held me here:
But she was dead; and so, I had to stay--
A fly, caught in the web of a dead spider.
It must be her he favours: and he's got
A dogged patience well-nigh crazes me:
A husband, born, as I was never born
For wife. But, happen, you ken him, well as I,
Leastways, his company-side, since he does business
At Bellingham? A happy ending, eh!
For our mischances, they should make a match:
Though naught that ever happens is an ending;
A wedding, least of all.

JUDITH:
I've never seen him.
Ruth keeps her counsel. I'd not even heard
His name, till late last night; and then by chance:
But, I've not slept a