He made as if to resume sweeping, but desisted to explain, "Ye see, they was my mates on the same job as me; and they knowed I'd ha' done the same for e'er a one o' they, more 'n once.
"My old mother-in-law was alive then, over here" (he looked across the hollow to the old house), "and they wanted we to go and 'ave the day with they. But my temper wouldn't have that. I says to the old gal, 'None o' their 'elp. We'll bide away, or else p'r'aps by-'n-by they'll twit us.' I'd sooner ha' gone without vittles, than for they to help and then twit us with it afterwards, talkin' about what they'd done for us at Christmas."
XIV
One of Bettesworth's swift short tales about his neighbours interested me considerably at this time, as illustrating the half-sordid, half-barbarous state of the people amongst whom he had to hold his own when not at work. I did not suspect that the same tale would put me on the track of a curious discovery relative to his own past history.
January 23, 1902.—It was a quiet, windless morning, and the sound of the knell reached us through the still air. Bettesworth said, "I s'pose old Jerry's gone at last, then."
"Old Jerry?" I asked.
"Ah, old Jerry Penfold. We always called 'n Old Jerry. He bin dead several times—or, 't least, they thought so. Rare ructions there bin over there, no mistake. They got to sharin' out his kit. One come an' took away his clock, and another his chest o' drawers, and some of his sons even come an' took away his tools. But the oldest son got the lawyer an' made 'em bring it all back."
"Rare ructions"—yes: but Bettesworth used the word "rare" as we should use "great," and did not mean that the affair was very unusual. He was not scandalized so much as amused by it. For my part, knowing nothing of the family, who dwelt in another quarter of the parish, I sought only to identify Old Jerry. Some years previously an old man who walked along the road with me one night had interested me with a tale of his shepherding and other labours on a certain farm. I had never learnt his name, nor had seen the man since; but now it occurred to me that perhaps he was old Penfold. I asked Bettesworth.
Bettesworth decided in the negative. Old Penfold had never been a shepherd, or worked for the farmer I named.
Yet another old man then came into my mind: a diminutive man, upwards of eighty, who was still creeping honourably about at work. Frequently I met him; but he seemed so shut up in himself that I had never cared to intrude upon him with more than a "Good-day" when we met. But now I named him to Bettesworth: old Dicky Martin. Could the missing shepherd have been he?