On reaching the cottage I found him in his bed upstairs. Certainly he had lost strength since I saw him. At first his voice was husky, and he was inclined to cry at his own feebleness; soon, however, he recovered his habitual quick, quiet speech, though a touch of weariness and debility remained in it. Stripping back the sleeve of his bed-gown he exhibited his arm: the muscle had disappeared, and the arm was no bigger than a young boy's. He shed tears at the sight, himself. Nor was he without pain. As he lay there that morning his legs, he said, had felt "as if somebody was puttin' skewers into 'em, right up the shins"; but he had rubbed vaseline over them, and after about half an hour the pain diminished. The doctor, visiting, had said "Poor old gentleman"; and, to him, not much more. "Old age--worn out," was the simple diagnosis he had furnished downstairs, to Liz. Another visitor had called--who but the owner of that cottage from which the Bettesworths had been compelled to turn out two years ago? I do not think Mr. ---- recognized Bettesworth. He had merely heard of an old man in bad plight--an old Crimean soldier, too--and he wished to be helpful. "And a very good friend to me he was!" Bettesworth said heartily, in a sort of emotional burst, losing control of his voice and crying again. Mr. ---- had "come tearin' up the stairs--none o' they downstairs didn't know who he was," and had spoken compassionately. "'What you wants,' he says, 'is feedin' up--port wine!--and you shall have it.'" He was told that the doctor had recommended whisky. "'Very well. When I gets home I'll send ye over a bottle, the best that money can buy.'" Having left, "he come hollerin' back again: 'Here! here's five shillin's for him!'" But, said Bettesworth to me, "I never spent it on jellies an' things; I thought it might be put to better use than that." Besides this unexpected friend, Bettesworth told me that a Colonel resident in the parish was moving on his behalf, endeavouring to get him a pension for his services in the Crimea. "But that en't no use," the old man said; "I en't got my papers," or at any rate he had not the essential ones. He tried to account for their disappearance: "Ye see, I've had several moves, an' this last one there was lots o' things missin' that I never knowed what become of 'em."