year agone, blest if I didn't do—ah, double thet there little 'eap in the day's work—and yet, blame me if I feel a bit weaker nor I used ter! You mark my words, Reuben, boy; the hours is a-gettin' shorter every day—thet's what they're a-doin', and you put it down at thet!"
"Young Reuben laughed."
Young Reuben laughed incredulously. "You're a-gittin' lazy, old 'un—that's about the size of it," he said.
"I hain't a-gettin' nothink o' the kind nor discripshen!" said old Reuben, starting up indignantly; "and you put it down at thet."
"Well, lazy or not lazy, I ken show ye a stone as you ain't industrous enough fer to break. Found it in a furrer, I did; an' talk about 'ard! And a fair rum 'un he be, too."
They plodded to the field young Reuben had just left; and young Reuben, with some difficulty, lifted the "stone" for inspection. It was a bowl, very ancient by the look of it, laboriously carved and ground out from a piece of rock that seemed as hard as steel.
"A rum 'un he be, too, and right you are," said old Reuben. "A wash bowl, likely."
"What be that 'ole in the bottom fer, then?" said young Reuben.
"Why, fer to empty him, that be, as a pig might see with 'is eyes shet."
They carried the bowl home, and a pretty good weight they found it. Old Jim Pedler came along that evening to have a pipe. Jim Pedler had been about a deal here and there, and he knew a lot.
"Why, whatee got theer?" said he.
"Mebbe ye'll know that better ner us," replied old Reuben. "Some kind o' wash-basin, so we seem to reckon it be."
"Wash-basin," said old Jim Pedler. "That's jest what it been't. I tellee now, I do think as it's some kind of old sort of water-clock, an' that's what I think. Why, see here now, if there ain't bin lines 'ere inside fer to mark the hours or somethin'. That's it—it be a water-clock. S'pose we gits some water an' tries it."
They cleared out the hole at the bottom and filled the bowl with water up to the first hour mark; and, old Jim Pedler having a watch, they sat and looked on as the water dripped out; but when they had sat and smoked for two hours the bowl was still far from empty.
"'Twern't never meant to reckon hours by, that's a moral," said young Reuben.
"Thet's more ner you knows," replied old Reuben. "What der you know about folks's hours as lived ages ago? You jest let other folks's hours alone, as p'raps knowed better ner you. Mebbe their hours was longer—what did I say this wery day about the hours a-bein' shorter now than wot they was thirty year agone? But I tell yer wot: it 'ud make a notionable kind of clock if we was to bore the 'ole a bit bigger and jest manage to git it right for the hours."
So they drilled and filed and tried to chip; and after much labour they made the hole large enough to let out the water from one mark to the next in sixty minutes. And all the while there hovered around them, invisible, the spirit of him that fashioned the bowl, longing to speak what it knew; but its time for returning to the flesh was not yet—but it was coming.
