habitations, but there are few roads, and those are deep in sand. For the labouring people do not interchange visits and pay calls; they just go to work and come home again, each to his own place. At home, they look out upon their own particular hollow, and upon little besides; or, living high up on a bluff, they get outlook upon the other side of the main valley, which is lower, tamer, smoother than this. It begins—that other side—in narrow meadow or plough land at the bottom, and so rises gently to a ridge fringed with cottages. In addition to these dwellings, there are a few hovels down by the stream itself, with their backs stuck into the sand-cliffs, and with gardens between cliff and stream so narrow that a man might almost jump across them. A second jump would take him over the stream into the meadow-land just mentioned.

With a rapidly increasing population empty cottages are scarce, as Bettesworth now found. Moreover, his choice was restricted. There were reasons against his going to the upper end of the valley. It was more newly peopled by labourers from the town, who had never known, or else had lost, the older peasant traditions which Bettesworth could still cherish—in memory, at least—here in the more ancient part of the village. Of course, that was not how he explained his distaste; he only expressed a dislike for the society of the upper valley. "They be a roughish lot up there," he would say. The fact was, he did not know many of them intimately, from which it may be seen how curiously our parish society is disintegrated.

Besides, he wanted a cottage not a mile away, but near to his work, so that he might go home to dinner and see how his wife was getting on. If he was growing old, she was older; and what was worse, she was subject to epileptic fits. There were days when he worried about her all the time while he was at work, and went home uneasily, dreading to find her fallen down in a fit. It was necessary, therefore, that if he moved it should be not far away. His last move had been in the wrong direction—from the adjoining bluff to a hollow further down stream—and now he desired to get back.

One of the steep and narrow lanes mentioned above is that which runs down beside this garden, where Bettesworth's work lay. It is picturesque enough, beneath its deep banks and hedgerows and overhung by my garden trees; but that is of no moment here. Within Bettesworth's memory it afforded access even for a waggon right down to "the Lake," and so over into the meadow opposite; but the last hundred yards of it, from Mrs. Skinner's cottage downwards, have long been washed out into a mere foot-track, deeply sunk between its banks, swooping down precipitously to the stream-level, and scarce two feet wide. So you emerge from the sand cliffs, and the valley is before you. Then the footpath winds along to the left (eastwards), having the cliff on one hand and the stream on the other, to a wider stretch, until with this for its best approach you come to a little hovel of three rooms and a lean-to shed, standing with its back walls close in against the sandy cliff.

At the period we are dealing with, this cottage had a poverty-stricken appearance, upon which Bettesworth himself had been wont to comment severely, though the place was in reality no worse than others beyond it and elsewhere in the parish. But it had suffered from utter neglect under the previous tenant, a thriftless Irishman, while, after the Irishman left, it stood empty for a time, and looked like falling quite derelict. Then, however, the landlord had a few repairs done, and at the end of September, to my amazement, I heard from Bettesworth that he had taken it. He would save eighteen-pence a week by the change: the new rent was only two shillings.

Ought I to have expostulated? Perhaps I should have done so, but for the queer expression in the old man's face when telling me his intention. There was some shame, but more of dogged defiance. "You think what you like," so I interpreted it—"that's the place I'm going to." He was armed, too, with testimony in favour of the cottage.

"Skinner" (the bricklayer) "says he don't see why it shouldn't make a very nice little place for two. He done up the roof there t'other week, and he ought to know." Later, the old man repeated Skinner's opinion, and added, "I think I can make it comfortable. Ye see, there en't bin nobody to try before."

This was true enough. The Irishman's tenancy had not in any sense improved the cottage. The place could not be worse used, and it might conceivably be fairly habitable in more careful hands.

During the first week in October Bettesworth effected his removal. It was an inauspicious time. He had been counting upon the stream-bed for a roadway along which to cart his things, so as to avoid scrambling up and down the devious pathways and tracks that led to the cottage, but, unfortunately, the stream this week was in flood. A cart might, indeed, have struggled along it, and one was, in fact, bespoken—Jack Crawte's, to wit; but at the appointed time the cart failed to arrive, and upon Bettesworth's going to inquire for it, he discovered that the Crawtes were all gone into the town to the fair.

Next day they promised to come "by-and-by." Bettesworth accepted the promise, but he also chartered two donkey-carts, which were really more suitable for getting out from the first cottage into one lane, and then round and about, up and down, to the head of the gully by Mrs. Skinner's. Farther than that even donkey-carts were useless. For the last and worst hundred yards nothing but a wheelbarrow or a strong back could be of any use.

Fortunately (in these circumstances), poor old Bettesworth's household goods were not many, nor yet magnificent; yet still they were enough for him to manage. The main of them were shifted on the Thursday, and I should not like to say how many times that day the old man slaved down the gorge with loaded wheelbarrow and up with it empty; but Mrs. Skinner witnessed his doings, and complimented him.

"Why, Freddy," she said—"why, Freddy, you'd kill half the young uns now, old as you be."

There should have been a helper—one Moses Cook, familiarly known as "Little Moser"; but little Moser was not a success. On the Wednesday, promising to lend a hand "in five minutes," he delayed coming until he had found time to get drunk and then arrived with the proposal that Bettesworth should give him a pint to start with. "Git out o' my way!" was Bettesworth's reply. The next day the little man was willing, but useless.

"Couldn't even git up there by ol' Dame Skinner's with a empty barrer! I says to 'n, 'Git in an' let me wheel ye up!' I says. Made me that wild! Why, I'd lifted a chest into the barrer all by myself—and he must ha' weighed a hundred and a quarter, with what there was in 'n, ye know—and wheeled 'n down. And then to see this little feller. 'You be in my way,' I says. 'You better go 'ome and sit down, and then p'raps we shall be able to git something done!' I was wild. I told 'n, 'They says Gawd made man in His own image—you must be a bloomin' counterfeit!'"

At one time there was a threat of rain, and Bettesworth "whacked all the beddin' he could on to the barrer, and down and in with it." Fortunately, the rain held off.

Towards night the cart came into action. It brought a load or two of firewood—not along the stream itself, but beside it, through the flooded meadow. The wood was tipped out on to the raised bank across the stream, just opposite Bettesworth's new home, there to remain for the night. But the old man could not rest with it there.

"I got all that across," he said, "and into the