be signalman, for one. But what most amused her was a old woman, when they was goin' out two by two for their walk in the grounds, flingin' her arms about and liftin' up her skirts an' dancin'.... She was havin' her reels and her capers in highly deglee." The old man pondered a few moments, then concluded pensively, as he stepped out to his work again, "What a shockin' thing, this mind!" His accent on the last word sounded almost resentful.

May 6, 1898.—The next day he reported that the man Crosby was said to have got "religious ammonium, is it? Some such name as that."

The talk of religion reminded him of a former employer, of the Baptist persuasion, who, when annoyed with him, was wont to say impatiently, "Bother your picture!" So, of a dead pigeon, from whose crop seventy-two peas were taken, "Bother he's picture!" said the Baptist. Another imprecation of this man's was, "Drabbit it!" at which, however, Bettesworth used to expostulate, telling his master, "Look 'ere, you Baptists may lie, but you mawn't swear! And so he could lie, too," he added—"no mistake. And once he said anything, he'd stick to it."

A month or more passed, and I forgot all about poor Crosby, until one delicious morning, when Bettesworth thought fit to tell me that he was no better. A neighbour had cycled to Brookwood on Sunday to see him and report about his family, Crosby's wife being in child-bed. But the information quickened no interest.

"All he kep' on about was the devil. The devil kep' comin' and botherin' of 'n. 'Tis a bad job. I s'pose he went right into it—studyin' about these here places nobody ever bin to an' come back again to tell we. Nobody don't know nothin' about it. 'Ten't as if they come back to tell ye. There's my father, what bin dead this forty year. What a crool man he must be not to 've come back in all that time, if he was able, an' tell me about it. That's what I said to Colonel Sadler. 'Oh,' he says, 'you better talk to the Vicar.' 'Vicar?' I says. 'He won't talk to me.' Besides, what do he know about it more 'n anybody else?"

Early in the summer of 1896 Bettesworth had been immensely proud of his peas, which were ready for picking quite a week before other people had any. The fame of these peas had got abroad in the parish; it had reached a youth—a new curate fresh from a theological college—and had appealed to his fancy so strongly that he sent a servant to buy threepennyworth of the precious crop. And Bettesworth had chuckled.

"I bin a-laughin' to myself all the mornin'.... Three penn-'oth o' peas! I never heared talk o' such a thing! I told the gal to go back and tell 'n to save his money till they was cheaper."

June 13, 1899.—But three years later Bettesworth seems to have changed his policy. On June 13 once more he had peas to boast of, and already for some days his wife was itching to be at them.

"Look, there's a nice pea, and there," she would say, handling the dangling pods.

But Bettesworth would answer, "Yes, they be; and you let 'em bide."

"For the sake of a shillin' now," he explained to me, "I en't a-goin' to have that haulm spoilt, and lose two or three shillin's later on."

His brother-in-law agreed that he was right. It was all reported to me in Bettesworth's own words.

"'I thinks you be right, Fred,' he says. 'You better get along without that shillin' now, and have two or three later on.'"

Old Mrs. Skinner, too, commended him. She told of a neighbour who had picked a few peas very early, and ruined his crop; for in the hot weather the juicy haulm was sure to wither soon if bruised by handling.

The weather was glorious just then, yet ill for our sandy gardens.

"As blue as a whetstone," said Bettesworth, in forecast of what the cabbage crop would be, should rain not soon come. "And en't the grass slippery and dry! 'Twas a hot day yest'day, no mistake! I was up in my garden when Mrs. Skinner come up lookin' at my peas. She reg'lar laughed at me. 'Well, Fred, you be a purty picture!' There was the sweat all trinklin' down my arms, an' the dust caked on.... But she did admire they peas. Still, she reckoned I was right leavin' 'em. So I says to my old gal, 'You let 'em bide.' So she'll have to, too. 'Tis for me to give the word."

III

October 7, 1899.—I have mentioned Bettesworth's neighbour Noah, the young man who used to sit up too late at night reading the paper. Notwithstanding this bad habit, he and Bettesworth had been on excellent terms of friendship. It was to Noah that Bettesworth had turned, for example, when I lent him those copies of the Daily Chronicle in which the first particulars of Nansen's voyage in the Fram were published. Unable to read himself ("I can't see well enough," he said, "or else I be scholard enough"), he invited Noah and Noah's wife to come on the Sunday and read to him the explorer's narrative.

"We started," said he, "about two o'clock, and there they was, turn and turn about, as hard as ever they could read up to half-past five." The evening was spent in raising the envy of other neighbours. "They wanted to borry the papers, but I says, 'No, they ben't mine to lend.'"

The readers themselves seem to have conceived an intense admiration for Nansen, whose bed of stones especially excited Bettesworth's imagination.

"I've had some hard lay-downs in my time," he exclaimed, "but that! Gawd! what they poor fellers must ha' suffered!"

Not long afterwards, Noah was called in again to help enjoy a seedsman's catalogue. It was read through from cover to cover.

Yet Noah proved to be a treacherous friend, after all. I have no record of the occurrence, but I think it must have been in the summer of 1897 that he began to covet Bettesworth's pleasant cottage, and by offering the owner a higher rent succeeded in getting possession of it. Bettesworth was obliged to quit. He took a cottage in a little row at three-and-sixpence a week, where he was comfortable enough for about a couple of years. At the end of that period, however, certain difficulties over the water-supply became acute—a laundress next door was pumping the well dry—and other discomforts arising, he began in the autumn of 1899 to look out for another home.

It is a singular place, this parish. The narrow valley it occupies is that of a small water-course commonly known as "The Lake," which in summer is a dry bed of sand, but in winter becomes a respectable brook of yellow waters which grow quite turbulent at times of flood. In their turbulence through long ages they have cut deep into the northern side of the valley, and now for some two miles that northern side, all warm and sunny, slopes down towards the stream, and there breaks off in precipitous sand-banks which in most places overhang the stream and make it inaccessible. But not in all places. There are various gaps in the sand-banks, where the rains and storms of centuries have scooped out the upper slope into tiny gorges and warm secluded hollows, down which footpaths wind steeply, or narrow bumpy lanes, to some plank bridge or other thrown across the stream. In these hollows the cottages cluster thickest; there they form little hamlets whose inhabitants sometimes hardly know the other villagers. Such, indeed, is my own case: hundreds of my fellow-parishioners half a mile away are practically strangers to me. Hundreds, for it is a large parish. The bluffs which separate the hollows are not unpeopled; they have their cottages and gardens dotted over them without order at the caprice of former peasant owners. All sorts of footpaths and tracks connect these