But these nights, in which he does not go to bed! His ankles and calves get the cramp, for he seems not to have thought, so little practice has he had in making himself comfortable, of resting his feet on another chair, while he is lying back in the easy-chair downstairs.... He has gone home now, to make up a fire and get what rest he may. "But then," he says, "she'll holler out, an' I got to run." He told me again how she "fell out o' bed flump" last night, and he stormed upstairs and found her on the floor, for "she didn't know how to get in again, not no more'n a cuckoo." The group of cottages where he lives stands high above the road, which is reached by steps roughly cut into the steep bank. On one of these recent nights, having gone down the steps meaning to buy his wife sixpennyworth of brandy, Bettesworth felt in his trousers pocket for the shilling he had put there, and--it was gone. "Oh, I was in a way! I went back, an' crawled all up they steps, feelin' for it," the hour being eight o'clock, and moonlight. "As I went past old Kiddy's, I called out to 'n, 'Kid!', 'cause I wanted to tell 'n what trouble I was in, and I knowed he'd ha' come and helped me to find 'n, if he'd bin about. But he was gone to bed, 'cause he starts off so early in the mornin'." Thus the old man got back home, disconsolate, without the necessary brandy for his wife; and, calling upstairs to her, "Lou, I've lost that shillin'," he began to prepare for his night in the easy-chair. But, first feeling in his pocket once more, he discovered there (fruits of his wife's incapacity) "a hole," he said, "I could put my finger through." He pulled up his trouser legs to the knee, "because I always ties my garters up above the knee," and, with his foot on "the little stool I always puts 'n on to lace up my boots--I've had 'n ever since my boy was born--I thought I felt somethin' in the heel o' my shoe, and as soon as I pulled 'n off it rattled on the floor. _Wa'n't_ that a miracle? My hair stood bolt upright! I gropsed an' picked 'n up, and hollered up the stairs, 'I've found 'n!' 'Oh, have ye?' she says. 'I thought you'd bin an' spent 'n.'" Quickly he was off again to the public-house--Tom Durrant's--and "I says, 'I lost that shillin' once. I'll take good care I don't lose 'n again!' And I chucked 'n up on the counter. Durrant says, 'Oh, did ye lose 'n?' So then I come back 'ome with my sixpenn'oth o' brandy. But wa'n't it a miracle? My hair stood reg'lar bolt upright, and I was that _contented_!" There was much, very much, that I am missing; but I must not quite pass over the old man's talk on the way to the town this morning. He did not once mention his trouble. All the way it was his ordinary chatter--the chatter of a most vigorous mind, which had never learnt to think of things in groups, but was intensely interested in details.