One afternoon in spring Bettesworth was sent on an errand to the town, about a mile away. I also had business there, and we walked off together.

“I give my old finger a tidy smack 's mornin',” he began, showing a finger clumsily bound up with a very dirty rag.

“Ah, they told me you'd cut it rather badly.”

“He never left off bleedin' all dinner-time. So when I come out, I got a stingin'-nettle an' clapped on 'n.”

“That's a very good thing, I suppose?”

“It do give ye snuff for a time. But 'tis a rare thing—in any bad cut, now—to stop the flow o' the blood.”

“I daresay you do feel it, at the moment.”

“Yes, it makes ye soop at first. But you takes all the sting out, ye know, before you puts it on. Rubs it up between your 'ands, so 's to git rid o' the sting, and then it's one o' the finest things out. Old Steve Blackman up at Linfield, he was the first as ever I knowed use it. He chopped his knee once—he was a pointin' hop-poles and 'twas a cold day and his 'and got numb an' the axe slipped … He says to a boy what was with 'n, ‘Run and git me a needle an' thread.’”