_October 17, 1900._-Two words of Bettesworth's, noted down for their strangeness at the time, restore for me the October daylight, the October air. He was discussing the scarlet-runner beans (I can picture now their warm tints of decay), and he estimated our chances of getting another picking from them. The chances were good, he thought, because in the sheltered corner where the beans stood, uplifted as it was above the mists that chilled the bottom of the valley, "these little snibblin' frostis that we gets o' mornin's" would not be felt. "Snibblin'" was a new word to me, and now I find it associated in my mind with the earliest approaches of our English winter. Near the beans there were brussels sprouts, their large leaves soaked with colour out of the clouded day. Little grey swarms of "white fly" flitted out as I walked between them; and, again, Bettesworth's name for that form of blight--"they little minners"--brings back the scene: the quiet vegetable garden, the sad rich autumn tints, the overcast sky, the moist motionless air. To this undertone of peace--the peace you can best absorb at labours like his--he was able to discourse dispassionately of things not peaceful. In a cottage higher up the valley there was trouble this October. I may not give details of it; but, in rough summary, an old woman had died, her last days rendered unhappy by the misbehaviour of her son--a young labourer. Talk of his "carrying on," his late hours, his frantic drinking, and subsequent delirium, crept stealthily up and down the lanes. He was "a low blackguard," "a scamp," and so forth. The comments were excited, generally breathless, once or twice shrill. But Bettesworth kept his head. An indignant matron said spitefully, "'Ten't every young feller gets such a good home as that left to 'n." "Well, and who got a better right to 't?" was Bettesworth's calm rejoinder.