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JUST ORDINARY OLD FOLK ELEAZER was getting old. And no one seemed to notice it except Eleazer himself and Sarah his wife. It was the one progressive thing in the life of these two, that steady, sure, creeping getting older. It is years now since I first met Eleazer in the lane. After that we were always meeting in the lane-the tranquil old lane, deep between the hawthorns, that leads up the hill to the smithy and the Hafod. Somehow it always seemed good to meet Eleazer. He looked so homely, so handsome, an old man seated on the seat of his gambo behind the old black mare. There was such a pleasantness in his round, open, ruddy face with its Calvinistic fringe of grizzled brown beard; there was always a kindliness alight in the eyes that overcame the severity of the two deep furrowed lines beside the mouth. I remember too that Eleazer was a true old stager of Moel y Garnedd in his allegiance to the old-fashioned country cloth, and there was always a distinction, a quiet rural dignity, about the way he wore his suit of rough grey worsted, his speckless moleskin trews. Man," I used to tell him as he slackened the reins on the black mare's back, man, but you're looking younger every day And Eleazer would smile that old, slow kindly smile of his and shake his head- Eh, lad," he would say but we be getting old, Sarah and I, getting old now, lad, getting old." It got to seem to to me strangely, quietly pathetic. Every time we met-and we met often in the lane- there was the same old slow smile of Eleazer's, the same musing answer-year in year out. It had got an obsession with Eleazer and with Sarah-the wife of Eleazer-this fascinated mournful watching of time as it swept past them. I can see the old couple as they used to sit of an evening on either side of the fire in the old Hafod kitchen. Those long, dull winter evenings !­ and it always seemed so very, very quiet in that kitchen just the click of Sarah's needles, the occasional shuffle of Eleazer's feet on the hearth, or the rustle of a deliberately turned page when Eleazer read augustly in the great Matthew Henry." Very subdued and tranquil, even, seemed the steady glow of that fire, a culm fire, a fire without crackle or dancing of flame, just an even inexor- able red glow. And there was the old clock ticking, ticking slowly away in its oaken case by the door. Why, in the stillness of that old homestead one would almost hear the swift, low-murmuring sweep of time hurrying by-that current which sets but ever one way, full, silent undeviating like the tide of some vast river. And sometimes Sarah would say as she bent over her stocking, Eh, but we're getting old now, Eleazer, getting old! Ah, but life must have got very empty, very monstrous in that old farmhouse after George and Tom went away Please send this Magazine to a Soldier at the Front. and founded homesteads of their own far at the foot of the Frenni Fawr. There were days (after the harvest was in and before the winter ploughing began) when Eleazer and Sarah took the gambo and trekked away to visit in state the homes of their children at the foot of the Frenni. But those journeys grew rarer too as the years rolled on. It was a long and a rough road to the Frenni, and the old black mare was not so sure of her footing as she used to be in the dark on the way home. And then Sarah died. Then it was that Eleazer suddenly seemed to grow as old as he felt. Crushed by a great loneliness, the old man seemed to wither away, to wilt like a sere leaf in the snows. One winter's day he slipped on the ice in the close and broke his leg. That was the beginning of the end- It was on a bright sunny day in early autumn that we laid Eleazer to sleep with his fathers in the little grey churchyard at Elim. Jeremiah Hopkins was my com- panion on the way home from the funeral. I remember Jeremiah "Very decent; very respectful," Jeremiah was saying as he mopped his brow, for it was hot, very hot for late September. Might you have noticed," he added what age they gave on the plate ? Eighty-two I replied but the old Wern Bible makes it eighty-three on the flyleaf." Ah, well, they always were a long lived breed, that Wern stock. There was Daniel now, he was ninety-two when the new-fangled sanitary man came up from Trefeli. Mister James' says he, meaning Daniel, right up against your back door is no place for you to be having your dung-heap its unhealthy. Look here man,' says Daniel, I'm ninety-five look at me. The old woman in there's ninety if she's a day as far as memory goes not one of us Wern folk have died under seventy-an' that dung-hill's been where it is for two centuries, of that I'll be bound. Get away with you man with your blathering about unhealthiness But he never got over the loss of the old lady, Eleazer did'nt," continued Jeremiah. He. withered up after that, withered up like an old potato on a barn floor. Eh. but it's a main sad sight to see a man go to nought like that, a main sad sight! The sycamores in the copse by the roadside were turning a golden yellow. Already some of the leaves were down. And there were Jeremiah and I glad to stop on the middle of the hill and rest! Why, I had never noticed before what a pull there was on that hill. Perhaps it was the heat. It had always seemed such an easy hill to tackle- but I felt a sudden alien regret clutching at my heart as I looked upon the sycamores. The air seemed so full of a brooding fruition, of accomplishment, of ripeness We'll," said Jeremiah at last, we'll be getting on." E. Roland Williams.