It has been an afternoon of magnificent summer weather, not sultry, but sumptuous; with vast blue sky, a few slow-sailing clouds, a luxuriant west wind tempering the splendid heat. The thermometer in my room stands at 80° while I am writing. So Bettesworth lay just covered as to his body and legs with a counterpane, showing his bare neck, while his sleeves falling back to the elbow displayed his arms. From between the tendons the flesh has gone; and the skin lies fluted all up the forearm, all up the neck. But at the foot of the bed his feet emerging could be seen swollen and tight-skinned. His ears look withered and dry, like thin biscuit. He did not complain much of pain. Sometimes, "if anything touches the bottom o' my feet, it runs all up my legs as if 'twas tied up in knots." Again, "what puzzles the doctor is my belly bein' like 'tis--puffed up and hard as a puddin' dish." The doctor has not mentioned dropsy, to him. Enough, perhaps, that he has told him that his heart was "wasting away." "That's a bad sign," commented Bettesworth, to me. He said he had asked the doctor, "'Is there any chance o' my gettin' better?' 'Not but a very little,' he said. 'If you do, it'll be a miracle.'" At that, Bettesworth replied, "Then I wish you'd give me something to help me away from here." "Why, where d'ye want to go to?" the doctor asked; and was answered, "Up top o' Gravel Hill" to the churchyard. "I told him that, straight to his head," said the old man. He lay there, thinking of his death. Door and window were wide open, and a cooling air played through the room. Through the window, from my place by the bed, I could see all the sunny side of the valley in the sweltering afternoon heat; could see and feel the splendour of the summer; could watch, right down in the hollow, a man hoeing in a tiny mangold-field, and the sunshine glistening on his light-coloured shirt. Bettesworth no doubt knew that man; had worked like that himself on many July afternoons; and now he lay thinking of his approaching death. But I thought, too, of his life, and spoke of it: how from the hill-top there across the valley you could not look round upon the country in any part of the landscape but you would everywhere see places where he had worked. "Yes: for a hundred miles round," he assented.