From her account of him it was evident that Bettesworth was in a critical state. He ought not to be left alone for the approaching night; but the question was, who would sit up with him? As it was out of my own power to do that, and as the old man's life might depend on its being done, my duty was clear enough: I could make it worth somebody's while to undertake the watching; and accordingly I made the offer. The woman hesitated, thinking of her family and her laundry work, and of her husband's toilsome days too; and then, seeing that with all their toil they were very poor (she told me much about her circumstances afterwards), she finally decided that she and her husband would see Bettesworth through the night. Her husband had work three or four miles away, and was leaving home at four in the morning: she herself had a young baby at the time; but, says my note-book, "they did it." And on the following morning, as we had arranged, their daughter went that weary journey to the relieving officer, and brought back to me by ten o'clock his order for the medical officer's attendance. It seemed that the old pitiful routine we had been through several times before was to be entered upon once more; but to expedite matters I enclosed the order for attendance in a note of my own to the doctor; and the girl started off with it to the town, to add another three miles to the five or six she had already walked that morning. That, one would have supposed, should have almost ended the trouble; but though a man be dying it is not easy, under the existing Poor Law, to get him that help which the ratepayers provide, for the machinery is cumbersome, and the people who should profit by it do not appreciate its intricacies, or know how to make it work smoothly. In the present instance much trouble would have been saved, if Bettesworth's neighbours had known enough to correct an oversight of the doctor's. There was no delay on his side; but unfortunately it was the _locum tenens_ again who called; and he contented himself with giving his verbal assent to Bettesworth's going to the infirmary. That, of course, was useless; but the women attending Bettesworth did not know it. On the contrary, they supposed that the formal certificate could be dispensed with, and that a note from myself would satisfy the relieving officer. A message from them reached me, begging me to write such a note, which, they said, Bettesworth's nephew would take over to Moorway's in the evening.