toward Cilla, wondering that so slim a lass could bring such peace about a hearth.

Hirst followed him out when at last he got to saddle. 'First visits mean second ones, eh?' he said. 'Step in any time ye're passing Good Intent, and good-night to ye, Mr. Gaunt.'

He listened to the hoof-beats as they grew fainter up the road; then he went indoors with a sigh, and sat down him in the hooded chair, and beckoned Cilla to his knee.

'We're most of us as big fools as we look, and some of us bigger,' he said. 'Ye're wondering why I asked Gaunt to the farm? Well, 'twas to pay a debt if you must have the truth. I've reckoned it up all ways, Cilla, and I've fought agen it, but I like to be just-when I can. I've been hard on the lad, and he went where I wouldn't have gone if I'd been paid in gold for it.' His face broke into broad wrinkles, full of charity and humour. 'Ye see, lile Cilla, a father's never i' the wrong to his lass-'twouldn't do to own up to 't-but when I see Gaunt framing like a farmer, and settling down to th' only good work God ever put into a man's hands—well, I war not exactly i' the wrong, ye understand, but happen I misjudged him, like.'

It was pleasant to Cilla, this sitting at her father's knee and listening while the big child's heart of the man found voice. She understood the battle with his pride, the surrender to a finer impulse.

Father, 'tis early days to talk of that,' she broke in with sudden fright.

'Ay, and early days are best, if ye want to get your land ready for a good crop to follow. Mind ye, Cilla, I've an old dislike to the

man.'

'Or of his father?' asked Cilla shrewdly.

'Well, both, maybe; but I'm talking of to-morrow, not o' yesterday. I saw the look that passed between ye when Gaunt came in, and I've seen other glances o' the kind. Now, sit ye down, lass. I've earned a fairly plain glimpse o' life, after trying for five-and-fifty year to get a lile bit nearer to 't. If ye wed Gaunt, I shall be lone and sorry, but I'll make the best of a bad job.'

'Father, cannot you understand that Peggy o' Mathewson's is scarce buried yet?' she murmured, afraid of herself and of all things.

He met her glance frankly, for he had something on his mind,

and meant to find speech for it. It was in times of stress that Hirst showed all the common-sense and strength that underlay his boisterous good-humour. 'Buried is hidden, as they say. Yesterday has lile concern for us, Cilla; but to-morrow has, and that's what I'm telling ye. It's the lesson men have to learn as lads—and women after they're had a bairn or two.'

Cilla sat looking into the peat fire.

Well, then, father,' she asked by and by,' what is it you want to say?'

'Just this, my lass,' said Hirst, blurting it out like a school lad. When I asked Gaunt in, it was because I owed him a debt, like, and wanted to repay it. When I asked him at the door to come a second time, 'twas for a different reason.'

'Yes, father?' asked Cilla, still looking at the peats.

'Ye're bound to meet each other, ye two, and I'd rather ye met here-well, as often as in the pastures or the bridle-ways. I think ye're a fool for your heartache, Cilla, but I'd liefer watch Reuben courting ye under my own roof than the sky's.'

Cilla flushed, and her voice was piteous. 'We've no thought of that kind—father, we're friendly, he and I, and I'm sorry for his trouble-there is no more than that.'

Get me

'Ay, ye're friendly, and ye're sorry; and I should know by this time, Cilla, what that means between a man and a maid. my pipe, lass, and say good-night, and think over what I've said.'

Gaunt, meanwhile, rode slowly home to Marshlands. The moon was softening all the outlines of the hills, and owls were calling here and there, making the silence of the land more friendly, if that were needed.

The man was bewildered by the peace of it all-peace of the hearth at Good Intent, with Cilla dainty and her father full of comradeship-peace of the night that was cool and fragrant and at ease. He had stood too near till now to the drought and trouble of the days at Ghyll to meet well-being without distrust. Whenever a cool breeze had met him, with a touch of moisture in it, he had recalled the heat and the naked furnace-sky that had shut the moorland in while Widow Mathewson and he held out against the adversary. Whenever an owl had called he had started, thinking Peggy o' Mathewson's was waking from her fever and needed him in the little upstairs room.

All was changed to-night. The soft, September scents were abroad, quiet ghosts that promised immortality to the summer which had seemed to die; the clouds about the moon were light as

thistledown; the two at Good Intent, father and daughter, had given him a new hold on life.

He did not know it-men seldom grasp at once these hands reached out to them from the bigger sky above; but he rode down to Marshlands a likelier man to-night, a man more brave to meet the future. All that he could think of, as he slipped from saddle and gave the reins to a farm lad, and went indoors, was the peace that lay about Good Intent. Cilla's clean, homely daintiness, like lavender; her father's uprightness, and the smell of honest cattle and good horses round about him; the peat-glow stealing ruddy across the yellow candle-light at Good Intent and tricking the grave rows of pewter, china, and delf mugs into a show of warmth; these fireside matters were full of meaning to him.

When he went up to bed, and opened his window to the September night, it was the same tale. A throstle was whistling a note or two as if getting ready for the spring.

'Silly lad, yond throstle,' was Reuben's thought. Think's he's going to find a mate to-morrow, and then set to work nestbuilding. Summer's dead, I reckon, and there's a lile, cold snap o' winter to come before he builds his nest.'

Outside the house at Marshlands, as Gaunt went to sleep, Billy the Fool watched the darkened windows. He was not homeless, because he had the open air about him, and a bed all ready in the crisp-dry bracken up above. He had no lack of friends; the birds and the four-footed folk saw to that. Yet to-night he was restless and ill at ease.

Billy could never 'sort out his thoughts, like,' as his neighbours said of him; but he could feel, and could remember, and his griefs and joys, because they were instinctive, were poignant and keen.

To-night he did not grudge Gaunt his house, his cosy bed, his riches; he pitied him for such barren wealth. It was Cilla's welfare that troubled him. Whenever he was free of his 'play' at the smithy, he had shadowed these two of late, always with the sense that harm might come to Cilla if she were unprotected in Gaunt's company. At the lad's heart to-night, as he stood under Reuben's window, were rage and pity for the scene ended long ago at Marshlands here. He saw Reuben's father send his mother out from the grey porch on his left-the porch whose limestone-white and lichen-grey were limned clearly by the light of the full moonand he heard her sobs as she leaned against the closed door of the VOL. XXVI.-NO. 155, N.S. 45

house. He could not disentangle the dead Gaunt from the living, and Reuben was a standing menace, answering for his father's sins.

Fool Billy at this moment was a menace, and one not fanciful at all. He was content to wait till dawn, to watch for Gaunt's coming out from the grey porch. He knew his strength and meant to use it.

A bridle-way ran close to the Marshlands fence, and the doctor riding home from a late round glanced at the moonlit front of the house. He saw Billy the Fool's fat hulk, and from long experience knew that there was danger in the set of the man's figure, his big head lifted to the casement up above.

'Give ye good-e'en, Billy,' he said, reining up. growing fond of Reuben Gaunt, it seems.'

'You're

Billy turned with his accustomed quiet. 'Not just fondrather t' other way, doctor, as a body's body might say.'

'Well, then, come catch my stirrup, Billy, and 'twill be play for ye to ride home beside me.'

Fool Billy paused, as a dog does when he is divided between duty to his pleasure and duty to his master. It was the word 'play' that enticed him, as the doctor knew it would. He laughed abroad to the blue-grey face of the moonlight, and vaulted the fence and clutched a stirrup. The madness had gone from him and left him a child again.

'Well, then,' he said—well, then, doctor-and as a body might say I was always one for playing.'

The exquisite, cool night lay like God's blessing over the Strathgarth lands. And Gaunt, too sound asleep to hear the Doctor's voice, or Billy the Fool's slow answer, dreamed quietly of Cilla in her lilac frock-of Cilla, who carried scent o' lilac with her, summer-tide or winter. There was no memory troubled him to-night of Peggy o' Mathewson's and a grave high up on the moor-face which he himself had dug for her; nor would he ever know, unless the doctor lost his habit of keeping his own counsel, how near the shadow of death had come to-night to Marshlands.

CHAPTER XXIII.

WIDOW MATHEWSON, up at Ghyll Farm, was prepared to find Reuben's visits grow fewer and fewer, until they ceased altogether.

'Stands to reason,' she told herself, with her half-grim, halfhumorous outlook upon life, 'stands to reason he'll slacken now, when there's no Peggy to 'tice him up the moor. 'Tis no way likely he'd come for th' pleasure o' seeing my wry face.'

Her judgment was wrong for once. Through the gold September days and the russet glory of October, Reuben snatched every opportunity to ride or walk to Ghyll. He persuaded Mrs. Mathewson to replace his own farm-hind, lent to her and sorely needed now in the busy life at Marshlands, with a steady workmanlike man-of-all-jobs of his own choosing. He helped her with the ingathering of the bracken. He took pains to set the new man in his place at once, to teach him that his work here was to save the mistress every trouble. All this Gaunt did, and more, though he could ill spare the time; and in between he would steal to the little glen and the rowan-tree that sheltered the stream-way and Peggy's grave of peat.

The widow could not read his motive in all this, and he himself at no time halted to probe into his methods. Remorse for his light playing with the love that Peggy had given him-pity for her end-self-condemnation because he missed her so little, however hard he tried to feel the decency of grief-all played their part in urging him to come often up to Ghyll. But there was more than this. Those weeks of heat and fever had taught him to see life with clearer eyes, to understand the worth of the affection shown him, in a grim and half-ashamed fashion, by the lonely woman who had nothing else, except her farm, to love.

Seems I've gotten a son in my old age,' she said drily, when Gaunt had taken some special pains on her behalf one morning of November.

Shouldn't wonder, mother,' he answered cheerily.

Well, now, there's a daft thing for a tough old woman to be doing. Seems scarce modest, Reuben-almost flighty-like'

She broke off with a laugh. Her clear, brave eyes were twinkling with mischief, with a spice of that wholesome devilry which no healthy woman loses till her death.

'How does your man-of-all-jobs frame?' said Gaunt.