"There was a man name o' Murrell--Sonny Murrell we always used to call 'n--lived at Cashford. _He_ was a very good mole-catcher. One time the moles started in down Culverley medders, right away from Old Mill to Culverley Mill--it looked as if they'd bin tippin' cart-loads o' rubbish all over the medders. I never see such a slaughter as that was, done by moles, in all my creepin's." (I think "creepin's" was the word Bettesworth used, but his voice had sunk very low just here, and I could as easily hear the clock as him.) "But they sent for Sonny. He was a _clever_ old cock, in moles; they had to be purty 'cute to get round 'n--some did, though; you'll see how they'll push round a trap--but after he'd bin there a fortnight you couldn't tell as there'd bin any moles at all." One other topic which we briefly touched upon must not be omitted. Before my arrival Bettesworth had crept out to the gate by the road, he was saying, tempted by the loveliness of the sunshine; and hearing of it, I warned him to have a care of getting out in this easterly wind. Ah, he said, we might expect east winds for the next three months now, for this was the 21st of March, and "where the wind is at twelve o'clock on the 21st of March, there she'll bide for three months afterwards." So he had once firmly held; and he mentioned the theory now, though apparently with little faith in it. For when I laughed, he said, "I've noticed it a good many times, and sometimes it have come right and sometimes it haven't. But that old Dick Furlonger was the one. He said he'd noticed it hunderds o' times. We used to terrify 'n about that, afterwards--'cause he was a man not more 'n fifty; and we used to tease 'n, so's he'd get up an' walk out o' the room." XXXVII During April I was away from home a good deal, and neither saw much of Bettesworth nor heard about him anything of importance. He seems to have recovered a little strength, to enable him to creep about the village when the weather was at all fit, but the drizzling rains and the raw chill winds of that spring-time were not favourable to the old man, who had almost certainly had a slight touch of pleurisy, if nothing worse, earlier in the year. May, however, was not a week old before the weather brightened and grew splendid. The very sky seemed to lift in the serene warmth; and now, if ever he was to do so, Bettesworth should show some improvement.