interlaced to check their trembling betrayal of old age, told how
in his youth he had "swep" a four-acre field single-handed in three
days--an almost impossible feat--and of the first reaping machine
in these parts, and how it brought, to his thinking, the ruin of
agricultural morals with it. "'Tis again nature," he said, "the
Lard gave us the land an' the seed, but 'Ee said that a man should
sweat. Where's the sweat drivin' round wi' two horses cuttin' the
straw down an' gatherin' it again, wi' scarce a hand's turn i' the
day's work?"

Old Dodden's high-pitched quavering voice rose and fell, mournful
as he surveyed the present, vehement as he recorded the heroic
past. He spoke of the rural exodus and shook his head mournfully.
"We old 'uns were content wi' earth and the open sky like our
feythers before us, but wi' the children 'tis first machines to
save doin' a hand's turn o' honest work, an' then land an' sky
ain't big enough seemin'ly, nor grand enough; it must be town an' a
paved street, an' they sweat their lives out atwixt four walls an'
call it seein' life--'tis death an' worse comes to the most of 'em.
Ay, 'tis better to stay by the land, as the Lard said, till time
comes to lie under it." I looked away across the field where the
hot air throbbed and quivered, and the fallen grass, robbed already
of its freshness, lay prone at the feet of its upstanding fellows.
It is quite useless to argue with old Dodden; he only shakes his
head and says firmly, "An old man, seventy-five come Martinmass
knows more o' life than a young chap, stands ter reason"; besides,
his epitome of the town life he knows nothing of was a just one as
far as it went; and his own son is the sweeper of a Holborn
crossing, and many other things that he should not be; but that is
the parson's secret and mine.