Well, he was glad. He wanted the harvest over. It would, perhaps, be
his last harvest at Clinton Magna, where he had worked, man and boy,
for fifty-six years come Michaelmas. His last harvest! A curious
pleasure stirred the man's veins as he thought of it, a pleasure in
expected change, which seemed to bring back the pulse of youth, to
loosen a little the yoke at those iron years that had perforce aged and
bent him; though, for sixty-two, he was still hale and strong.

Things had all come together. Here was "Muster" Hill, the farmer he
had worked for these seventeen years, dying of a sudden, with a
carbuncle on the neck, and the farm to be given up at Michaelmas.
He--John Bolderfield--had been working on for the widow; but, in his
opinion, she was "nobbut a caselty sort of body," and the sooner she
and her children were taken off to Barnet, where they were to live with
her mother, the less she'd cost them as had the looking after her. As
for the crops, they wouldn't pay the debts; not they. And there was no
one after the farm--"nary one"--and didn't seem like to be. That would
make another farm on Muster Forrest's hands. Well, and a good job.
Landlords must be "took down"; and there was plenty of work going on
the railway just now for those that were turned off.

He was too old for the railway, though, and he might have found it hard
to get fresh work if he had been staying at Clinton. But he was not
staying. Poor Eliza wouldn't last more than a few days; a week or two
at most, and he was not going to keep on the cottage after he'd buried
her.

Aye, poor Eliza! She was his sister-in-law, the widow of his second
brother. He had been his brother's lodger during the greater part of
his working life, and since Tom's death he had stayed on with Eliza.
She and he suited each other, and the "worritin' childer" had all gone
away years since and left them in peace. He didn't believe Eliza knew
where any of them were, except Mary, "married over to Luton"--and Jim
and Jim's Louisa. And a good riddance too. There was not one of them
knew how to keep a shilling when they'd got one. Still, it was a bit
lonesome for Eliza now, with no one but Jim's Louisa to look after her.

He grew rather downhearted as he trudged along, thinking. She and he
had stuck together "a many year." There would be nobody left for him
to go along with when she was gone. There was his niece Bessie
Costrell and her husband, and there wa