But no man can go on indefinitely, and Bettesworth begins to know that one by one the doorways of life are being shut upon him.

One day he had been busied in trimming-up the rough green paths at the lower end of the garden—a kind of belated haymaking, with no better tool than a fag-hook. A scythe might have been more effective, if there had been one to use; but Bettesworth likes his hook, and knows how to use it. “Many's the pound I've earnt with he,” he will tell you, with an affectionate look at the curved blade.

For various reasons I had been unable to go near the old man all day, so that when in the evening I went to look for him, I half expected to find that he had gone home. But he was still in the garden, stuffing the newly-cut grass into a sack, to make litter for his pig. “Make he feel like a gentleman,” he remarked, with a dry smile.

It was in the beginning of the harvest days. The sun was already low, and our little valley lay for the most part in shadow, deepened where we stood by darkening oak-trees whose leaves gently stirred overhead.