_September 19, 1904._--Because they can so little afford to be ill, it is habitual among the very poor to neglect an illness long after other people would be seriously alarmed at it; and the habit had been confirmed in Bettesworth with regard to his wife's maladies, by her having so many times recovered from them without help. It was almost a matter of course to him, when about the middle of September, and less than a month after his return from the hospital, she became once more exceedingly unwell. So she had often done: it was not worth mentioning, and was not mentioned, to me. I knew of no trouble. If I had been asked about his welfare at that time, I should have said that the old man was rather unusually happy. I should have said so especially one Monday morning (it was the 19th of September); because on that day we were picking apples, and his conversation was so delightfully in harmony with the sunshine glinting among the apple-boughs. He told of cider and cider-making; and then of shepherds he had known on the Sussex Downs, and of their dogs, and their solitary pastimes upon the hills. Hearing him, no one, I am sure, could have supposed that at home his wife had been dangerously ill for nearly a week, and that consequently his own comfort there had for the time ceased to exist. Later on that Monday his wife's condition (not his own) was somehow made known to me. I suppose Bettesworth consulted me on the step he was contemplating, of going to the relieving officer to-morrow to get an order for medical attendance for old Lucy. At any rate, by Monday night that is what he had resolved to do, and I knew it and approved, remembering what the policeman had said to me. It seemed a wise precaution to take, but evidently it could not be urgent. Bettesworth was choosing Tuesday, because on Tuesday mornings the relieving officer is in attendance in the parish, and the order could therefore be got without a five-mile walk for it.