Boy, for your grandfer's sake I do beseech

you.
70 DAUBER

Don't let the Spital pass to strangers.
Squire
Has said he'd give it you if we require.
U i



Your mother used to walk here, boy,

with me;
It was her favourite walk down to the

mill.
And there we'd talk how little death would

be
Knowing our work was going on here still.
You've got the brains, you only want the

wiU.
Don't disappoint your mother and your

father.
I'll give you time to travel, if you'd rather.'



'' It wasn't travelling, though, that filled my

mind;
I could forget the farm by wandering out,



DAUBJSB 71

Tracing the little brooks and trying to

find
A gravelly stretch with belly-rubbing trout.
Or, trickling from a dock-leaf in the spout,
Beside some lonely cottage up the hill,
The source of waters that would turn our

mill.
''That's what I loved, water, and time to

read.
Then I'd come home to sister's nagging

tongue.
Saying my sin made father's heart to

bleed.
And how she feared she'd live to see me

hung.
And then she'd read me bits from Dr.
Young,
And supper would begin, and sister Jane
Would fillip dad till dad began again.
72 DAUBER

"Tve been here all my life, boy. I was

bom
Up in the room above, looks on the mead;
I never thought you'd cockle my clean com
And leave the old home to a stranger's seed.
Father and I have made here 'thout a weed :
We've give our lives to make that. Eighty

years.
