_March 26, 1896, 10.30 a.m._--There are deep cloud-shadows, and rapid sun-glints lighting up the shadows like daffodils shining against grass. And there is the roar of a big wind in the air, and majestic clouds are sailing across, and beyond these the sky is a dazzling blue. All growing things seem busy. Everywhere on the land men are at work; the swift sunshine glistens on the white of their shirts, and shows them up against the darkness of the new plough-furrows or the freshly dug garden-ground. Bettesworth was sowing peas. Blustered by the wind, I went to him and complained of the coldness of it. "A good touch of north in it," was a phrase I used. "Yes, sir; she (the wind) have shifted there since the mornin'. She was due west when I got up--when that little rain come. She've gone round since then, but she'll git back again to the south, you'll see. I've noticed it many's a time. Right south she was at twelve o'clock when the sun crossed the line o' Saturday (March 21), and that's where she'll keep tackin' back to all through the quarter--till midsummer, that is." "Well, I don't know that she could do much better." "No, sir. Strikes me we be goin' to have a very nice, kind spring. I don't say she'll bide there all the time; but if she gits away, that's where she'll come back to." Again I expressed my dislike of this strong north wind. It would soon make me sleepy, I said. "_Would_ it, sir? Oh, I do like to hear the wind! To lay and listen to it when I be in bed--it makes me feel so comfortable. No matter what 'tis like outside, I feels that _I_ be in the warm aw-right." _March 31, 1897._--At six minutes to five this morning Bettesworth was lacing up his boots. The day is the last of March, which, for gardeners in this village, is the middle of the busiest time of the year. The early seeds have been in the ground long ago; the beans are up two inches; the first sowing of peas shows well in the rows; others were put in last week. Shallots are sending up their green spikes; there are a few potatoes already planted; and now every effort must be made, and advantage be taken of every opportunity, to get the remainder of the ground ready and the main crops planted at the earliest possible time; for in this soil, as Bettesworth says, "you can't be much too for'ard." Late last night he and his old wife planted their potatoes in a few rods of ground he has at the end of my garden. It was seven o'clock, and dark, by the time they had finished; then they went home and had supper--or, at least, the wife had, whose work had not been arduous until the evening. She scolded her husband. "There you goes slavin' about, and gets so tired you can't eat." "It's true," Bettesworth confesses. "The more I works the less I eats.... No, nor I don't sleep, neither. If I got anythink on my mind, I can't sleep. I seems to want to be up and at it." Supper over, he lit his pipe, had one smoke, then kicked off his boots and said,