the pickaxe, so as to produce an effect of
intentional rhythm. One might have fancied that clock and pickaxe
iterated in turn, "Time, Death! Time, Death! Time, Death!" till the
clock had come to the end of its tale, and then the pickaxe went on
alone in the stillness--"Death! Death! Death! Death!"

A smile, not easy to be accounted for, flitted across the face of Mrs.
Temperley.

The old gravedigger paused at last in his toil, leaning on his pickaxe,
and bringing a red cotton handkerchief out of his hat to wipe his brow.

"That seems rather hard work, Dodge," remarked the onlooker, leaning her
book upright on her knee and her chin on her hand.

"Ay, that it be, mum; this clay's that stiff! Lord! folks is almost as
much trouble to them as buries as to them as bears 'em; it's all trouble
together, to my thinkin'."

She assented with a musing nod.

"And when a man's not a troublin' o' some other body, he's a troublin'
of hisself," added the philosopher.

"You are cursed with a clear-sightedness that must make life a burden to
you," said Mrs. Temperley.

"Well, mum, I do sort o' see the bearin's o' things better nor most,"
Dodge modestly admitted. The lady knew, and liked to gratify, the
gravedigger's love of long-worded discourse.

"Some people," she said, "are born contemplative, while others never
reflect at all, whatever the provocation."

"Yes'm, that's just it; folks goes on as if they was to live for ever,
without no thought o' dyin'. As you was a sayin' jus' now, mum, there's
them as contemflecs natural like, and there's them as is born without
provocation----"

"Everlastingly!" assented Mrs. Temperley with a sudden laugh. "You
evidently, Dodge, are one of those who strive to read the riddle of this
painful earth. Tell me what you think it is all about."

Gratified by this appeal to his judgment, Dodge scratched his head, and
leant both brawny arms upon his pickaxe.

"Well, mum," he said, "I s'pose it's the will o' th' Almighty as we is
brought into the world, and I don't say nothin' agin it--'tisn't my
place--but it do come over me powerful at times, wen I sees all the
vexin' as folks has to go through, as God A'mighty might 'a found
somethin' better to do with His time; not as I wants to find no fault
with His ways, which is past finding out," added the gravedigger,
falling to work again.

A silence of some minutes was broken by Mrs. Temperley's enquiry as to
how long Dodge had followed this prof