"He can do the tracin', in a straight run; but he can't tie up. I could do it all: the tails, and the manes too--you've see it. I'd get a bit o' live" (lithe?) "straw ... 't was when I was a boy-chap, a little bigger 'n that 'n" (whom at the moment we were meeting) "down at Penstead at Farmer Barnes's. I used to be such a one for the hosses; and I could do it, because my fingers was so lissom." (Poor old stubbed, stiff, bent fingers! to think of it!) "And then, I took such a delight in it. And Mrs. Barnes--she was a Burton--she was as proud o' them hosses! Used to get up at four o'clock in the mornin', purpose to see 'em start off. And the harness was all as clean--the brass used to shine as bright as ever any gold is, and she _was_ proud. Twenty thousand pound, was the last legacy she had. She was just such another woman to look at as old Miss Keen, what used to live down in the town; and a better woman never was. "That's where I got all my scholarship.... Well, I could read--a little--but not to understand it. But she--she give me shirts, an' trousers--'cause we wore smock-frocks then--but she give me shirts an' trousers to go to night-school in. Course, I couldn't have had proper clothes without. 'Cause 'twas only thirty shillin's a year besides grub an' lodgin'.... And 't wan't no use to talk about runnin' away. I hadn't got no home. Besides, we was hired from Michaelmas to Michaelmas." We spoke again of various neighbours, and thus drifting on (I am omitting vast quantities) Bettesworth presently told of a recent attempt at starting a village football club, or rather, of the subsequent discussion of the affair at the public-house. An enthusiast there wished to get "as many members as ever they could." "But how be ye goin' to pick 'em for play?" asked another. "Oh, pick the best." Bettesworth tells me this, adding, "I don't call that fair do's at all. I can't see no justice in that, that one should pay to be a member of a club, purpose for somebody else to have all the play. That's the way they breaks up a club. Break up any club, that would." _September 24._--Word was brought this afternoon (Saturday) that Bettesworth was at the kitchen door, wishing to see me. Of course he has not been to work to-day. I found him standing outside, patient and quiet, until, being asked how things were going, he began to cry, and shook his head, so that I feared something had miscarried and asked, "Why, haven't you got your wife away?" "Yes, we got her away, but she was purty near dead when we got her there. The matron shook her head, and said, 'You'll never see her home again alive.'" There were repetitions and variations of this; but I, reiterating my assurances that "she had got a lot of strength," and that in fine the old wife would yet live to come home again, quite forgot to observe exactly what Bettesworth said. His distress was too afflicting.