year and in such dry weather. I mentioned the celery, reminding him, "You _have_ sweated over watering celery, haven't you?" Again he just smiled, and I fancy this smile was the last sign of rational interest and pride in his labour. For after this he became incoherent and wandering. Dimly we made out that he "wanted to put them four poles against the veranda," apparently meaning my veranda. "What for?" his niece asked. "To keep the wall up." Then I, "We won't trouble about that to-day," as if he had been consulting me about the work, and he seemed satisfied to have my decision. But I had stayed too long; so, grasping his hand, I said "Good-bye." He asked, "Are ye goin' to the club?" (He was thinking of the Oddfellows' fête arranged for to-morrow week, and had been wondering all day, his niece said, not to hear the band.) "It isn't till to-morrow week," we said. "How they do keep humbuggin' about," he muttered crossly. "Yes, but they've settled it now," we assured him. I have promised to go again to see him--to-morrow or on Sunday, because, according to his niece, he had been counting on my visit, and asking for several days "if this was Friday." The thought came to me on my way home, that he is dying without any suspicion that anyone could think of him with admiration and reverence. _July 25 (Tuesday)._--Bettesworth died this evening at six o'clock. _July 28 (Friday)._--This afternoon I went to the funeral. A week earlier (almost to the hour) when I parted from him, he seemed too ill to take his money--too unconscious, I mean. I offered it to his niece, standing at the foot of the bed; but she said, glancing meaningly towards him, "I think he'd like to take it, sir." So I turned to him and put the shillings into his hand, which he held up limply. "Your wages," I said. For a moment he grasped the silver, then it dropped out on to his bare chest and slid under the bed-gown, whence I rescued it, and, finding his purse under the pillow, put his last wages away safely there. On the Saturday I saw him, but I think he did not know me: and that was the last time. The thought of him keeps coming, wherever I go in the garden; but I put it aside for fear of spoiling truer because more spontaneous memories of him in time to come. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Memoirs of a Surrey Labourer, by George Sturt (AKA George Bourne)