This old man, reciting the litany of the dying, was the one whom I had seen in the town a week before. The district doctor, a surly man who gave advice to the poor people from the window of his carriage the while they stood on the pavement with uncovered heads, remarked to him as he wheezed at the smoke of a pipe: "To your coffin, gaffer, to your coffin. . . Look at him! He's a hundred years old and still he wants to go on living." But the old villager shook his white head and wailed: "Ah, kind sir, ah!"
When I now saw him at his work, I could not help exclaiming: "I see that you've got well again, gaffer, as you're following the plough."
He stood still, panted for breath, and said in a voice that sounded as if it were coming out of a well:
"Well again? I follow the plough because the plot must be ploughed over for the winter crop. . . now I'm ploughing about the last two ridges. . . and that'll be the end of it."
"Do you hope to see the harvest?"
"Jesus preserve! This very week they'll bury me in the holy soil."
"How do you know that?"
He raised his eyebrows a little and silently opened his lips, as if he were unusually surprised at this question. Then he shook his head and remarked with emphasis:
"I know, and that's enough."
