To-night, the 18th of April, as I was leaving the town and making my way homewards, I fell in with Bettesworth. I was just enabled to recognise him by the last of the street lamps. It seemed dark there in the street, at eight o'clock; but as we mounted the hill together, there was sad twilight lingering, enough to show me the old man's plodding, determined way of walking, which was yet quite as quick as I cared to keep pace with. It was Saturday night. I supposed he had been to get a shave.

“Well, Bettesworth,” I said, “done your bit in the town?”

“Yes, sir. I done all I got to do for this week.”

He was walking with a stick. This, and his very low-crowned soft hat like a curate's, gave him in my eyes an unwonted appearance of respectability, and perhaps of age. At first he talked slowly; and although I noticed that we were overtaking other men on the road, I could not help feeling how old and weary he seemed. To give him the chance of confessing as much, I said—

“I'm almost leg-weary, Bettesworth. I've been all up into Searle Park.”

“Oh, you 'ave had a round, sir.”

Then, as I had heard the cuckoo for the first time, I was proud to say so. Bettesworth, however, had heard him a day or two earlier; some one else, a week ago.