"There," he says, "I've got my wind again; you see it's up hill, and this cough shakes a fellow awful. Never mind, though; I hope there's rest up a-top for even a poor fellow like me; and, do you know," he says, quite softly, "I begins to want to get there, though it does grit me to think as I can't take Polly on the box with me; but that's a hard thing to understand--that about life, and death, and 'ternity--for ever, and ever, and ever. That's what the youngest parson as comes talks to me about. Nice fellow he is; I like him, for he seems to want to light one's lamps up a bit and clear the road--seems fond of one like, and eager to give one a shove outer the block. But there; I ain't lived to six-and-sixty year without having my own thoughts about religion and that sort of thing. I know as we're all bad enough, and I s'pose a-top of the hill there it will all be reckoned against one, and kep' account on, good and bad. As I sez to Polly, after that chap had been here as is so fond of hearing hisself speak, and allus calls me `my friend;' `Polly,' I sez, `it's no manner of use; I ain't a-going to turn king's evidence and try to shirk out of it that way: what I've done wrong will go to the bad, and what I've done right I hope will go to the good, while I'm sure no poor fellow could be more sorry than me for what's amiss.' When we goes afore Him as judges up there, sir, it will all be made light, and there won't be no feeling as justice ain't done. There won't be no big fellows in gowns and wigs a-trying to swear a chap's soul away--making a whole sarmon out of a word, and finding out things as was never before thought on at all. I've been before 'em, and examined and cross-examined, and twisted about till you don't know what your a-saying of. And so, when I thinks of all this lying still in the night, listening to the rumbling of the kebs--kebs as I shall never drive no more; why, I feels comfortable and better like; don't seem to see as it's so werry serious, as my number's been took, and I'm summoned; `Done my dooty,' I says, `and kep' home together as well as I could; and it would ha' been all the same if I'd ha' been born a dook, I must ha' come to it same as I'm a-coming now.' Of course I should ha' had a finer funeral; but there, lots of fellows as I knows on the rank, chaps as is Foresters, they'll drive behind me with their windy-blines down, and a little bit o' crape bow on the ends o' their whips; they'll smoke it at night in their pipes, and take it werry much to 'art when they thinks on it, and puts their blines right again--but mine won't open no more now."