The strong hand of one stronger than man had taken him; and in a few days more, on February 23rd, hands tender and strong, the hands of an affectionate brother and true friends, bore the body of a shepherd, dead in his prime--for he was but 36 years old--down through the cow-pasture and over the gurgling Glenderaterra, and so through the silent Brundholme woods above the wailing Greta away to its rest in English earth beneath the shadow of the old church of St. Kentigern, in the Crosthwaite valley, within sight of that horned hill of Skiddaw he had loved so well. The people of Keswick begged that his body might be carried through their sorrowful town that opportunity might be given of showing sympathy and respect. And many a stalwart yeoman came to the Homegoing. Little they said, but they felt much as they moved in their dark market-carts toward the burial. 'Eh, but what! it's a terrible loss for us all!' 'The best man amang us gone.' 'We all mun ga when t' time comes, but it's hard bearing is this.' 'Niver a handier man wi' {158} t' sheep i' t' whoale forest.' 'Niver a better man clim't t' fell; a decent, stiddy man as iver was; niver heard a wrang word from him.' 'Eh, but! it's past finding out t' way young uns goes, and auld ones stays.' 'Poor lass, she's lost as good a mate as ever woman had.' 'Poor barns, they've lost a fadder afore they kent him.' And so sorrowfully they turned away from the grave, whereon flowers had been strewn and wreaths laid by hands of men who in their common regret forgot all party differences and thought only of Joseph Hawell, as a man the 'Blues and Yellows' were alike proud of in life, and alike determined to honour in death. I was a traveller in foreign lands when the news of Joseph Hawell's death reached me, and I felt for a moment stunned. As I realised it, it seemed to me as if I did not care to see Skiddaw again. He was a piece of it; and Skiddaw without him would be no Skiddaw at all, such an ideal yeoman shepherd; so tender-hearted to the yeanlings; so true to his mountain flock; such a man among men, honest and upright, reliable; one always knew somehow that if Joe was present, men right and left of him would {159} behave like gentlemen; so high-minded and bent on the 'Just and True'; and, 'as the great ones only are, in his simplicity sublime.' His influence was wider and deeper than he had dreamed of, and I felt that with Joe Hawell a power that had worked for righteousness in a whole fell-side community, had passed as far as visible form goes from the earth.