Stronger it grew , and sadder , and deepened into the tone of a death-bell , knolling dolefully from some ivy-mantled tower and bearing tidings of mortality and woe to the cottage , to the hall and to the solitary wayfarer , that all might weep for the doom appointed in turn to them . Then came a measured tread , passing slowly , slowly on , as of mourners with a coffin , their garments trailing on the ground , so that the ear could measure the length of their melancholy array . Before them went the priest , reading the burial-service , while the leaves of his book were rustling in the breeze . And though no voice but his was heard to speak aloud , still there were revilings and anathemas , whispered but distinct , from women and from men , breathed against the daughter who had wrung the aged hearts of her parents , the wife who had betrayed the trusting fondness of her husband , the mother who had sinned against natural affection and left her child to die . The sweeping sound of the funeral train faded away like a thin vapor , and the wind , that just before had seemed to shake the coffin-pall , moaned sadly round the verge of the hollow between three hills . But when the old woman stirred the kneeling lady , she lifted not her head . `` Here has been a sweet hour 's sport ! '' said the withered crone , chuckling to herself . THE TOLL-GATHERER 'S DAY . A SKETCH OF TRANSITORY LIFE . Methinks , for a person whose instinct bids him rather to pore over the current of life than to plunge into its tumultuous waves , no undesirable retreat were a toll-house beside some thronged thoroughfare of the land . In youth , perhaps , it is good for the observer to run about the earth , to leave the track of his footsteps far and wide , to mingle himself with the action of numberless vicissitudes , and , finally , in some calm solitude to feed a musing spirit on all that he has seen and felt . But there are natures too indolent or too sensitive to endure the dust , the sunshine or the rain , the turmoil of moral and physical elements , to which all the wayfarers of the world expose themselves . For such a man how pleasant a miracle could life be made to roll its variegated length by the threshold of his own hermitage , and the great globe , as it were , perform its revolutions and shift its thousand scenes before his eyes without whirling him onward in its course ! If any mortal be favored with a lot analogous to this , it is the toll-gatherer . So , at least , have I often fancied while lounging on a bench at the door of a small square edifice which stands between shore and shore in the midst of a long bridge . Beneath the timbers ebbs and flows an arm of the sea , while above , like the life-blood through a great artery , the travel of the north and east is continually throbbing . Sitting on the aforesaid bench , I amuse myself with a conception , illustrated by numerous pencil-sketches in the air , of the toll-gatherer 's day . In the morning -- dim , gray , dewy summer 's morn -- the distant roll of ponderous wheels begins to mingle with my old friend 's slumbers , creaking more and more harshly through the midst of his dream and gradually replacing it with realities . Hardly conscious of the change from sleep to wakefulness , he finds himself partly clad and throwing wide the toll-gates for the passage of a fragrant load of hay .
The timbers groan beneath the slow-revolving wheels ; one sturdy yeoman stalks beside the oxen , and , peering from the summit XXXXX the hay , by the glimmer of the half-extinguished lantern over the toll-house is seen the drowsy visage of his comrade , who has enjoyed a nap some ten miles long .
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