"I was up to my sister's at Middlesham o' Sunday. She'd bin to Brookwood to see her sister-in-law. If they hadn't let her" (the sister-in-law) "'ome too soon that first time, she'd ha' bin all right. Wherefore now she's there again, and jest like a post. If they puts her anywhere, there she bides, and don't try for to do nothing. 'Relse, when she was there afore, they told my sister she'd work as well as e'er a woman in the place. She see several there what she knowed. Fred Baker's wife, what used to 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.