The rugged old face on the pillow is indeed lined and wrinkled; the one big hand lying outside the coverlet is gnarled and knotted, like the branch of an ancient tree; the form outlined by the bedclothes is of massive proportions.  A fine wreck of a man this useless cumberer of the earth.

“I shouldn’t be worth my mate if I did get better,” he says, reflectively, and without the faintest trace of bitterness.  “Nought but lumber—­in every one’s road.  Nay, I’d a deal sooner shift a’together.  I’ve allus worked ’ard—­it ’ud not coom nat’ral to be idle.  I’m ready to go, if it’s the A’mighty’s will.”

“Eh, He’ll be like to tak’ ye soon, feyther.  He will—­He’ll tak’ ye afore aught’s long,” says the daughter.  “Raly,” she adds, as she pilots her visitor downstairs after this consolatory remark, “it’s a’most to be ’oped as He will.”

Yet when He does, and poor feyther is carried away to his long home by his sons and cronies, there is genuine distress in the little household.  When the daughter has got her “blacks,” and drawn the club money, and the excitement of the funeral is over, she has leisure to miss the quiet presence, the familiar voice.  She starts up at night many a time fancying she hears it, and weeps as she falls back on her pillow again.  She polishes “feyther’s cheer” reverently, and treasures his pipe, and sobs as she cuts up his clothes for suits for her little lads, and takes in his great-coat to make it fit her gaffer.

“It was a blessed release,” she says, wiping her eyes, “an’ we had a nice funeral, but it’s lonely wi’out him.”

“A nice funeral” is the most important of all desiderata, and many are the privations which the living cheerfully endure, that the dead may be interred with due respect and decorum.  The most improvident of these people look forward to and prepare for the contingency, inevitable indeed, and yet deemed by other folk unutterably remote.

“Ah! it’s bin a struggle to keep ’em,” said a poor woman once, speaking of her little flock of ten healthy hearty children.  “I’ve noan bin able to put by much, but theer’s wan thing, I’ve got ’em all in a buryin’-club.”

Now and then when the death has been preceded by a long illness, and the family exchequer has sunk low, the neighbours come to the rescue, and with characteristic straightforwardness and goodnature avert impending disgrace.  One such case occurred here recently.  The father of the family had been hovering for months between life and death, and when he “drew away” at last, wife and children were left absolutely without means.  Nevertheless the funeral was beautiful, it was universally agreed.  The wheelwright made a coffin free of charge, one of the farmers sent the necessary refection; each household in the village did something, one supplying a whole dress, one merely a hatband.  When the time came for the procession to start, every child had its decent blacks, and though the question of how to live to-morrow was still unanswered,