The Oldest Inhabitant. 73 



generations of ploughboys kicking against it in their 

 rude play, and where they have not chipped it, filled 

 with lichen. The sexton says that this tomb in the 

 olden days was used as the pay-table upon which the 

 poor received their weekly dole. His father told 

 him that he had himself stood there hungry, with 

 the rest not broken-down cripples and widows, but 

 strong, hale men, waiting till the loaves were placed 

 upon the broad slab, so that the living were fed lit- 

 erally over the grave of the dead. 



The farmers met every now and then in the vestry 

 and arranged how many men each would find work 

 for or rather partial work so that the amount of 

 relief might be apportioned. Men coming from a 

 distance, or even from the next parish, were jeal- 

 ously excluded from settling, lest there should be 

 more mouths to feed ; if a family, on the other hand, 

 could by any possibility be got rid of, it was exiled. 

 There were more hands than work ; now the case 

 is precisely opposite. A grim witness, this old 

 tomb, to a traditionary fragment in that histoiy of 

 the people which is now placed above a mere list 

 of monarchs. 



The oldest person in the village was a woman 

 as is often the case reputed to be over a hundred : 

 a tidy cottager, well tended, feeble in body, but 

 brisk of tongue. She reckoned her own age by the 

 thatch of the roof. It had been completely new 

 thatched four times since she could recollect. The 

 first time she was a great girl, grown up : her father 

 thatched it again just before he died ; her husband 

 did it the third time, and the fourth was three years 

 ago. That made about a hundred years altogether. 



