Essays and meditations by a woman writing under a man's name from the last stage of a fatal illness - the road-mender who watches the world go past, the seasons, the death that is coming. Michael Fairless died at thirty-two and the book has never been out of print in England. This edition gathers The Roadmender and The Gathering of Brother Hilarius, with fifty-eight bound plates of painting by Vickers, Shaw, Hanula and Towne, 1792-1900.