_May 7._--A week afterwards he exhibited the same sort of aloof interest, annoyed and yet amused, in a jibbing horse. A horse had brought a ton of coal a part of the way down the lane, and then refused to budge farther; and Bettesworth could not forget the incident. It tickles me still to recall with what a queer look on his face he spoke of the noble animal. The expression was the result of his trying to say his word for _horse_ (not _'oss_, but _'awss_), while a facetious smile was twitching at the corners of his mouth. This was several days after the event. At the time of its occurrence, someone had remarked that the horse had no pluck, and Bettesworth had rejoined indignantly, "_I'd_ see about his pluck, if I had the drivin' of 'n!" But after a day or two his indignation turned to quiet gaiety. "Won't back," he said, "and he won't draw." I suggested, "Not bad at standing still." Then came the queer expression on Bettesworth's face, with "'Good 'awss to _eat_,' the man said." Truly it was odd to see how Bettesworth's lips, grim enough as a rule, arched out sarcastically over the word _'awss_. And it was in a temper not very dissimilar that he commonly regarded our Nonconformist neighbour. The man amused him. A pagan of the antique English kind, ready to poke fun at a bad horse, or sneer at a fanatic, or be happy in listening to the April talk of the starlings, Bettesworth had quite his share too of the pugnacity of his race. Years ago he had said that a fight used to be "just his clip," as a young man; not many years ago he had promptly knocked down in the road a baker who had got down out of his cart to make Bettesworth move his wheelbarrow out of the way (I remember that when the old man told me of this I advised him not to get into trouble, and he pleaded that it "seemed to do him good"); and now during this spring--I cannot say exactly when--the fighting spirit suddenly woke up in him once more. The circumstance takes us out again from the peace of the garden to the crude struggle for life in the village. Looking back to that time, I can see our valley as it were sombrely streaked with the progress of two or three miserable family embroilments, squalid, weltering, poisoning the atmosphere, incapable of solution. And though Bettesworth was no more implicated in these than myself, but like me was a mere onlooker, he was not, like me, an outsider. He was down on the very edge of these troubles, and it was the momentary overflow of one of them in his direction one night that suddenly started him fighting, in spite of his years.