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The Roadmender by Michael Fairless
page 30 of 88 (34%)
travelled, marking their landmarks, tracing their journeyings; but
with the eyes of a child of God he looks forward, straining to
catch a glimpse of the jewelled walls of his future home, the city
"Eternal in the Heavens."

Presently we left my road for the deep shade of a narrow country
way where the great oaks and beeches meet overhead and no hedge-
clipper sets his hand to stay nature's profusion; and so by
pleasant lanes scarce the waggon's width across, now shady, now
sunny, here bordered by thickset coverts, there giving on fruitful
fields, we came at length to the mill.

I left Jem to his business with the miller and wandered down the
flowery meadow to listen to the merry clack of the stream and the
voice of the waters on the weir. The great wheel was at rest, as I
love best to see it in the later afternoon; the splash and churn of
the water belong rather to the morning hours. It is the chief
mistake we make in portioning out our day that we banish rest to
the night-time, which is for sleep and recreating, instead of
setting apart the later afternoon and quiet twilight hours for the
stretching of weary limbs and repose of tired mind after a day's
toil that should begin and end at five.

The little stone bridge over the mill-stream is almost on a level
with the clear running water, and I lay there and gazed at the huge
wheel which, under multitudinous forms and uses, is one of the
world's wonders, because one of the few things we imitative
children have not learnt from nature. Is it perchance a memory out
of that past when Adam walked clear-eyed in Paradise and talked
with the Lord in the cool of the day? Did he see then the flaming
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