BELL: Hooked it: But, shed no tears for me: he only left me, As a sobering lout will quit the bramble-bush He’s tumbled in, blind-drunk--or was it an anthill He’d pillowed his fuddled head on? Anyway, He went, sore-skinned; and gay to go; escaped From Krindlesyke--he always had the luck-- Before the bitter winter that finished Ezra: But, I’d to stay on, listening all day long To that old dotard, counting the fifty sovereigns Your fancy man made off with, when he cleaned out The coffers of Krindlesyke, the very day Ananias and I came for our share, too late: And so, got stuck at Back-o’-Beyont, like wasps In a treacle-trap--the gold all gone: naught left But the chink of coins in an old man’s noddle, that age Had emptied of wits. He’d count them, over and over-- Just stopping to curse Jim, when he called to mind The box was empty: and, often, in the night, I’d hear him counting, counting in the dark, Till the night he stopped at forty-nine, stopped dead, With a rattle--not a breath to whisper fifty. A crookt corpse, yellow as his lost gold, I found him, When I fetched my candle. JUDITH: Dead? BELL: Ay, guttered out-- A dip burned to the socket. May chance puff out My flame, 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?