But though nothing appeared to be happening, the two old people were secretly in a state near to distraction. The reader will remember the peculiar topography of this parish, with the tenements dotted about for a mile or more on the northern slope of the valley. All up and down this district, and then on the other side, where he was less at home, Bettesworth hunted in vain for an available cottage within possible reach of his work: there was not one to be found. And now he realized his physical feebleness. Years ago, miles would not have mattered; he could have shifted to another village and defied the demands of our new-come town civilization; but now a walk of a mile would be a consideration. His legs were too old and stiff for a long walk as well as a day's work. For several days--and days are money, especially to a working-man--he searched up and down, his despair increasing, his dismay deepening, at every fresh disappointment. I began to fear he would break down. He could not sleep, nor yet could his wife. She had been crying half the night--so he told me after the misery had endured the best part of the week. "She kep' on, 'Whatever will become of us, Fred? Wherever _shall_ we go?'" and he, trying to reassure her that they would "find somewhere to creep into," seemed to be face to face with the workhouse as his only prospect. So they spent their night, and rose to a hopeless morning. It was time, evidently, for me to take the matter up. Besides, the old people's trouble was getting on my nerves. Across the valley there was an empty cottage--one of a pair--which the owner had refused to let on the strange plea that the tenants who had just left had been so troublesome and destructive that he was resolved against taking any others. Such a dry, whimsical old man was this landlord that the story was not incredible. A retired bricklayer, and a widower, he lived by himself on next to nothing, not from miserliness but from choice, and his chief object in life seemed to be to avoid trouble. He had, however, worked with Bettesworth in years gone by, and was, in fact, a sort of chum of his, so that it seemed worth while to try what persuasion would do to shake his resolution of keeping an empty cottage. And where Bettesworth had failed, I might succeed. So, one fine morning--it was near the middle of March by now--I hunted up this old man--a man as genial and kindly as I wish to see--and made him a proposal. He showed some reluctance to entertain it. Why? The truth came out at last: he did not want the Bettesworths for tenants; he knew the indescribable state of the old woman; it was to her that he objected; and it was to spare his old chum's feelings that he had invented that story about being unwilling to let the cottage at all.