He confessed to being occasionally light-headed. "I sees all the people I knows, in this room here. After I got back into bed to-day, there was three fellers leanin' over the foot o' the bed, lookin' at me; and one of 'em said, 'I reckon I shall get six months if I don't quit the neighbourhood.' I sprung forward--'I'll break your head if you don't clear out of _here_!' and I was goin' to hit 'n, an' then he was gone." In telling this the old man suited his action to the tale, and again sat upright, his thin grey hair tumbled, his jaw fallen, his eyes hopeless for very weakness. It was then that he looked so much like old Hall. He was wishing to be shaved, but could get nobody to do it for him. A labourer across the valley had been sent to: "He'd ha' come an' done it right enough, only he has rheumatics so bad he can't hold the razor." There was not much talk of the old kind; and for the first time in my acquaintance with Bettesworth I had to search for topics of conversation. One subject was raised by my mention of a neighbouring farmer who proposed to begin cutting his late hay next week. "Ah, with a machine," said Bettesworth; "he can't git the men. 'R else he used to say he'd never have a machine so long as he could git men to mow for him. Billy Norris and his brother" (elder brother to Kid Norris) "mowed for 'n eighteen years" in succession.... "They'd _live_ in a fashion nobody else couldn't. Never no trouble to they about their food. They'd just gather a few old sticks an' bits o' rubbish, and make a fire--nothin' but a little smoke an' flare--an' stick a bloater or a rasher on a pointed stick and hold it up again' the flare an' smoke jest to warm it, and down he'd go, and they'd be up and on mowin' again. Then there was a barrel o' beer tumbled down into the medder--they used to roll 'n into one o' they water-gripes and put a little o' the damp grass over 'n, and the beer 'd keep as _cool_.... And when he was empty then he'd be took away and another brought in.... But 'twas tea--that's what they drunk for breakfast. Jest have a drink o' beer when they started mowin'; then go on for an hour or two. Then one of 'em 'd go back to where their kit was, an' make the tea in the drum, an' get a little flare an' smoke; an' they'd jest hold their bloater on a pinted stick again' the smoke--I've laughed at 'em many's a time. Dick Harding over here used to say 't'd starve he to work 'long with 'em; he could do the mowin' but he couldn't put up with the food. That was their way, though. If they was out with the ballast-train or the railway-cuttin', they'd sit down on the bank--all they wanted was a little smoky fire." Bettesworth laughed a little, amused at these sturdy men, and at his own description of their cooking. I asked: "You never did much mowing yourself, did you?"