It is indeed a tedious business--I experienced it afterwards too--that of getting a sick person from this village into the local infirmary. It seemed that Bettesworth must lose at least a day's work in arranging for the removal of his wife. She could not be admitted to the house without a certificate from the parish doctor, who lived in the town, a mile and a half away. But the doctor might only attend upon Bettesworth's presenting an order to be obtained from the relieving officer, two miles away in the exactly opposite direction. The medical man would then come as soon as he found convenient, and Bettesworth would be provided with a certificate for his wife's removal to the infirmary. But he might not act upon that alone. With that in his possession, he would have to wait again upon the relieving officer, to get an order upon the workhouse master to admit the patient, and to arrange for a conveyance to take her away. We talked it over, he and I, that afternoon, not cheered by the wild weather that was hourly worsening. If all went well on the morrow, Bettesworth would have some twelve miles of walking to do; but it was most likely that, between relieving officer and doctor, two or even three days would elapse before the desired relief would be accomplished. However, the immediate thing to do was clear enough: he must make his first visit to the relieving officer as soon as possible. I forget on what grounds, but we agreed that it was useless to attempt anything that night; and since the officer would be off at eight in the morning for his day's duty in other places, Bettesworth proposed to be up betimes, and catch him at his office before he started. It would be just possible then, by hurrying, to get back over the three or four miles to the town, and find the doctor before he too should leave for the day. Otherwise there would be a sickening delay. The whole thing was sickening already, in its inevitable mechanical clumsiness. Still, there was no help for it. The weather meanwhile was threatening hindrance. A small driving snow had set in in the afternoon, and was inclined to freeze as it fell; and for some time before dark the opposite side of the valley had become all but invisible, blotted out by the dreary whiteness of the storm. At nightfall, the weather seemed to turn wicked. Hours afterwards, as I sat listening to the howling gusts of wind, which puffed the smoke from out of my fire, and brought the snow with a crisp bristling sound against my window, I could not get out of my head the thought of Bettesworth, alone with his crazy wife down there in that cottage, or the fear that deep snow might prevent his morning's journey. And then it was that recollection of his recent quiet conversations came over me. So to have talked, keeping all this trouble to himself, while he listened to the war news, and did his best to make the footways passable--there was surely a touch of greatness in it.