A rich man has dug a cellar against the end of the world, and I confess I do not see the sin in that. We all keep a little back. A crock of salt pork, a sack of turnips buried where the frost cannot reach. A man who does not think on the hungry months is a man who will not see the spring.
But this. This is no cellar. He has laid up food enough for ten winters, in little pots that will not rot, in a hole so deep no rain will ever trouble it. He has walls of iron and a door thicker than the church door, and a lamp that burns without oil or flame, cold as a corpse-candle, and I did cross myself when I saw it.
And here is the thing I cannot fathom. He fears the end of the world, so he has built a tomb and stocked it and means to climb inside while he still breathes. To wait there. Alone. When the plague came through our village, we did not hide from the Lord's judgment. We knelt in it. We buried our own and we sowed the field the same week, because the living must eat.
This man has more grain than the whole manor and no field to sow, no beast to feed, no soul to share it with. He has spent a fortune to be the last man alive in a hole.
The good Lord gives us the end when He gives it. A wise man dies among his kin with the priest at his side. Only a fool builds a barn to be buried in, and stocks it full, and locks himself in with the wages of his fear.