Reuben was home again at Marshlands. His housekeeper still watched him
carefully when she brought in his meals, and Peter, the farm-lad, stood
at least ten feet away when the master came out into the yard to give
his orders. Only Michael, the head man about the farm, showed common
sense.
“Fever’s like a turnip lanthorn,” said Michael, a few days after the
master’s return. “Ye’ve only to light the bogie, an’ set it up i’ a
dark corner, an’ watch ’em running for dear life. Oh, by th’ Heart,
sir, I’d liefer face it any day as ye did, than go running into my
burrow like a rabbit every time a kitty-call sounded over the pastures.”
Little by little, however, memory of the panic grew dulled. Ten days of
rain, with scarcely an hour’s cessation now and then, were followed by
exquisite, crisp sunshine, till Yeoman Hirst declared that the face of
the land “looked as clean-washed as a babby’s.” The breeze was sweet
and nutty to the smell. Flowers, checked till now by the drought, began
to show out of their proper season, while September’s natural brood
stirred into blossom in every field and hedgerow. It was a season such
as puts new heart into men, whether they admit the weather’s influence
or make pretence of denial.
The fever, too, had spent itself. In Shepston there was a case here and
there, at longer and longer intervals, but none further up the dale.
“Oh, I don’t want to boast,” said Hirst to Cilla, on one of these
clean autumn evenings, as they watched the sun go down, “but it seems
like as if th’ fever couldn’t bid to touch bonnie Garth. ’Twas afraid
to spoil her face, I reckon.”
“There, father!” laughed Cilla, with that pleasant linking of her arm
in his which was full of comradeship. “I believe ye love Garth village
better than any soul that lives in it.”
“Well, no,” answered the yeoman, his voice rising to a roar of
affectionate good-will. “There’s ye, Cilla, lass--but Garth runs a good
second, I should say.”
Cilla was quietly happy these days, though she would admit no reason
for it. On every side she heard guarded praise of Reuben; for the
doctor, who seldom spoke ill of a man, was fond of spreading good
reports abroad when honesty allowed it. It was known now in Garth, not
only that Reuben had chosen to go into Ghyll and share its troubles,
but that afterwards they had done all they could, he and the widow, to
keep the plague from spreading down to the valley.
Priscilla did not ask herself why praise of Reuben was so welcome.
She simply let the gold, September days drift by, and sometimes cried
o’ nights when she thought of Peggy o’ Mathewson, sleeping beside
the moorland burn. It was Cilla’s way to cry for others when her own
happiness took shape.
At Marshlands, maybe, the servants, all save Michael, the head man,
relished the changed outlook upon Gaunt less than their neighbours did.
They found the master more intent on details of the farm and house than
he had been; he went roaming, for a day or two, or a week, less often,
and they were not free to drive Michael wild with their taunt of:
“Well, th’ master idles all his time; why shouldn’t such as us?”
“The fever’s gone to his head, though he thought he’d ’scaped it,”
said the housekeeper sagely to Rachel, the dairymaid, as she watched
the butter-making. “I was allus telled it left its marks on a man, did
fever.”
She was right. The fever had gone, not only to Reuben’s head, but
to the heart of the man. He had never been trusted before, as Widow
Mathewson had trusted him. He had not been asked--save when he ran the
Linsall fell-races so gallantly--whether his courage were sound as his
wind. No one had taught him the way of his manhood until the time of
stress at Ghyll; but now he was moving with uncertain steps, like a
child first finding its feet, along his proper road.
Cilla met him one forenoon on the bridle-path that ran through
Raindrift Wood. For once in a way he was on foot, like herself, and not
on horseback; and they stood looking at each other, startled by the
sudden meeting.
“We--we have heard pleasant things about you, Mr. Gaunt,” said the
girl, trying to break down their disquiet, “and--and, indeed, we are
glad that--that nothing happened to you up at Ghyll.”
“I did what was needed, and was glad to be needed,” he answered simply.
“There was nothing at all to talk about, though you know how folk build
up a mole-hill and swear ’tis a mountain.”
Cilla glanced quietly at him. He had come out a changed man from the
furnace of those weeks at Ghyll. The easy, self-assertive jauntiness
was gone; his small affectations of speech and manner were lost; and
he spoke and carried himself as a yeoman should. The restless glitter,
too, had gone from his grey eyes, and the look in them was of a man who
had lately met life face to face. He was thin and haggard; yet Cilla
was conscious only of some new strength in him.
“Tell me of--of Peggy,” she said softly. “I was grieved when the news
came down to Garth.”
“She died without a good-by. That was the hardest thing to bear. If
there’d been a half-hour given to us for talk before she went, it would
have seemed easier. I was in need of forgiveness, maybe--”
He stopped, and his eyes sought hers gravely. Cilla could feel nothing
but a great tenderness, a sudden rush of pity. He was so quiet under
punishment, so ready to admit that it was well-deserved.
“You were always fond of seeing fresh places,” she said. “Leave Garth
for awhile, will you not, until--until the memory of it all grows
softened?”
For the first time Gaunt smiled. “I’ve taken just the opposite notion
into my head. Marshlands is a biggish place, and needs a master over
it. They will tell you in Garth that it has not known much of a master
these last years.”
Generous always in compassion, she could not check herself, but laid
her hand on his arm impulsively. “Never think that again! They tell
different stories of you now in Garth.”
“Yes, yes,” put in Reuben, with a touch of the weariness that would
keep him company for many a day. “They’re full of praise I haven’t a
need for. By and by they’ll forget, and I shall be ‘Mr. Running-Water’
to them once again. ’Tis well to know one’s by-name.”
“Oh, you must not be bitter! I tell you, they have changed--”
“Just so.” His pride was touched in some unexpected way. “They call a
fresh fiddle-tune, but are they sure I’ll dance to it?”
Cilla liked his stubbornness, liked the gravity which was so far remote
from her earlier knowledge of him. They said good-by in Raindrift
Wood, and Gaunt went slowly home, wondering that Cilla and he could
meet, not like lovers who had walked the field-ways when spring was
warm and urgent, but like friends who were old and tranquil as this
month of gold September.
At Marshlands, only Michael had faith in the master’s purpose; the
others said that he would tire of farming in a week or two more,
because it stood to reason that running water must be gadding off
somewhere or another.
Michael’s face grew cheerier as the days went on. He saw the master
keeping close at home; he saw the dairy-work grow cleanlier, the maids
and the farm-lads doing a day’s work in a day, instead of taking two to
it. Michael felt no jealousy. He had always had the farm’s interests at
heart, and had known that he could not rule the house until the master
set his own back to the work of supervision and ceased from wandering.
Reuben went his own way, as he had always done; but the new way, he
admitted to himself, rang more crisply underfoot than the old had done.
Folk were anxious in Garth village to show him that they knew and
understood what he had done at Ghyll; they were met by an easy courtesy
that was cold as an east wind, a courtesy that halted for a moment to
talk of the weather, and then passed by without a wish for friendship.
Reuben was plainly minded not to dance to their new tune as yet, and
they liked him the better for it.
He had found self-confidence. His father’s history, remembrance of that
bitter night, when, a lad of fifteen, he had seen Billy and his mother
driven out into the wind, had haunted him persistently, had lain always
in the background of his thoughts. He had grown used to the belief that
his by-name fitted him well enough, that he was infirm of will and must
be so to the end. There was no claim upon him, save the farm’s; and
that claim had been too abstract and impersonal until now to move his
fancy.
“’Twill not last,” he would think, coming home at nightfall from some
journey over the pastures. “But at the worst, it can do no harm, and
keeps me busy.”
As the days went by, he grew more full of wonder at the change in
himself. Little by little the lands, and the smaller of the farms, and
his own big house of Marshlands, crept into his heart, as a child might
creep to the knee of a lonely man and bring him soft companionship. He
had neither wife nor child of his own; and, lacking these, a man’s best
solace is love of the acres left him by many generations.
It was no ’prentice hand he turned to farming matters, after all. The
routine of it he knew by training; but the instinct toward it lay
deeper than one man’s life could ever sound. And the faces of the lazy
hinds grew longer day by day, and Michael went whistling about his work.
It was soon after Cilla’s meeting with him in Raindrift Wood that she
was caught by Widow Lister, passing down Garth’s highway.
“Oh, good day, Miss Cilla,” she said briskly. “Ye look lile an’ bonnie,
if a plain cottage-body might say so without offence. See my bit of a
garden here, an’ how the rain has watered it.”
Cilla halted, as all good-natured people did who accepted Widow
Lister as a load added by habit to the day’s work. She praised the
snapdragons, the asters, the marigolds, which, thanks to constant
watering through the drought, reared gallant heads to the quiet
September sunlight. Then she waited, knowing that this was the prelude
to some plea for help, or to some need for gossip.
“I hear queer news o’ Mr. Gaunt these days,” said the widow, with a
stolen glance at Cilla. “They tell me he’s a changed man, since he was
daft enough to step into Ghyll when he hadn’t any need to.”
“Man enough, you meant?” put in Cilla quietly.
“Ay, well, ’twas like him, anyway, to go seeking a spot where trouble
was, an’ then to run his head straight into ’t--though, of course,” she
added with a sigh of demure resignation, “’tis not for me to judge my
betters.”
Cilla smiled impatiently, for it was useless to be angry with this
woman who eluded censure as she had eluded all life’s sharp edges.
“Then why judge them, Mrs. Lister?” she asked briskly.
“Oh, I only say what I hear, and I niver have no faith myseln i’ sudden
conversions. When my man war alive, I war most frightened when he had
his serious, sober fits on him. I knew he’d break out worse nor iver
when he made a fresh start for th’ Elm Tree Inn. Mr. Gaunt, ye see,
is as God made him--an’ his father’s training no way bettered a poor
job--an’ that’s where ’tis.”
Cilla turned after a farewell that was colder than her wont, and saw
the widow stooping tranquilly over her flower-beds. Mrs. Lister,
indeed, seemed the incarnation of peaceful Garth--a trim, little figure
tending a trim, little garden-patch that fronted the roadway, with
the sun finding auburn streaks in the smooth, well-ordered hair that
should have shown a grey patch or two by now. And, in spite of herself,
Priscilla smiled; the widow was so gentle a wasp to look at, and yet
her sting was always at Garth’s service.
Fever and the dread which had made strong farmer-men ashamed, grew
half-forgotten by the village as September neared its end. Gaunt still
overlooked the work at Marshlands, still wondered that this love o’
land grew dearer to him day by day. And sometimes he met Cilla in the
fields, or on the roadway; and their friendship was quiet and sunny as
the light that lay about the hazel copses.
He was often up at Ghyll these days, and Widow Mathewson’s smile, when
she met him in the doorway, or saw him coming across the croft, was
his reward. She was doing the farm work alone, stubborn in her pride
of isolation. Reuben helped her so far as he could, but he had bigger
lands to see to; and one quiet noontide he walked up, with a strapping
farm-lad at his side.
“Who’s this ye’ve brought, Reuben?” said the widow, standing stiff at
her own porch.
“Only a lazy hound I can’t lick into shape, mother. Teach him to help
you about the farm, and send him back as soon as you’ve trained him. He
can be spared from Marshlands, now there’s less to be done about the
fields.”
“Nay, now, Reuben--I’m not one to go borrowing--I war niver that
sort--an’ I’m used to work.”
“The lad has his orders--from me,” said Reuben. “See that he does his
full share of the work, mother, and a little over.”
Mrs. Mathewson, to her surprise, found herself yielding to this new
air of Gaunt’s, half persuasive and half masterful. Indeed, she was
beginning more and more to lean on him, and would tell herself, as she
smoked by the hearth at nights, that she had earned a little luxury,
maybe, in her old age. This morning she was slow to yield. The work was
too much for one pair of hands, and she was “bone-weary;” but better
work till she dropped than let it be said that they had needed outside
help at Ghyll.
At last she consented grudgingly. “’Tis only a loan o’ th’ lad, mind
ye,” she hastened to assure him. “I suppose I mun hire one soon, like
it or no; ’specially now they begin to ask for milk again down i’
Garth. They ask i’ a whisper, though,” she added, with her old, tart
humour. “A shout would bring fever out of its kennel, so they fancy
still.”
So the farm-lad was left at Ghyll; and the look on his face was
laughable to watch when Reuben left him to the mercies of Widow
Mathewson. The master might be harder these days than of old; but the
widow’s hardness, and the strength of her fist to back it if need be,
were renowned throughout the dale.
September passed, and still the clear, gold magic made Paradise of
fields and copse. It was now that magic walked across the fells. The
dales-folk had seen the mystery in other years, but never as they saw
it now; for no man could remember such a spell of drought; and such a
fall rain to follow it.
The pastures, sloping to the blue and amber sky, had been smoking hot
before the rain came; the first day’s moisture had been lost, for it
was turned to the steam which men had named a ground-mist. The second
day’s fall had been lapped up, greedily as a cat laps milk, and the
third day’s, too, had gone to feed the soil. It was only on the fourth
day that the streams had begun to brawl and chatter, as if they had
claimed all the mercy of the skies. Like most folk who make noise, the
brooks were spreading an empty boast abroad; they were idlers for the
most part, dawdling down a field-way here, a glen there, until some
miller stayed their course and bade them turn his mill-wheel for him;
but it was the thrifty, working pastures that caught the first fruits,
and turned them to good uses.
Gaunt, as he rode about his lands, could see the miracle take shape
before his eyes. Sharp Fell, away to the southwest, had been as
grey-brown as a hazelnut, withered before it comes to ripeness; now
it showed a tinge of green, and each day the green lay deeper, richer
across the burnt-up pastures. He had watched this uprising of the
grass in far-off countries when the wet season followed extreme heat;
but never before in Garth.
Yeoman Hirst overtook him one of these days, when both were riding to
Shepston market. “Seems there’s going to be a hay-crop, after all,
though a lile bit late in the year,” he laughed, pointing to the
pastures with his switch. “They say Garth weather’s queer, but I niver
yet made hay at Kirstmas-time.”
“Let’s say there’ll be good grazing by and by, and that’s something to
be thankful for, before the winter drives the beasts indoors.”
Gaunt was shy of his fellow men, remembering past coldness; but with
Cilla’s father he was himself. The yeoman’s big, hearty outlook on the
world inspired confidence in all who met him; his friendship, not to be
bought at a price, was counted a privilege; moreover, he was master of
the house that sheltered Cilla.
They rode into Shepston together, and stabled at the same inn; and
Hirst, before he went about his business, turned to Reuben.
“We might as well jog home in company, we,” he said. “What time d’ye
start out for Garth?”
“Four o’ the clock, or thereabouts.”
“Well, we can meet here, then. I shall have done by that time and a
lonely ride does no man good, they say.”
They rode home together through the enchanted land. Old tradition
told of witchcraft here in Strathgarth Dale. Witchcraft there was,
of a kindly sort, and it came from the hills that raked the sky, the
hollows that caught the farewell music of the day, and softened it,
and went unwillingly to bed, to dream of fairies’ songs. The farmers
who lived in amongst this glamour said little about it; they were
scarcely conscious that they saw it, for they seldom asked themselves
any question that intruded into the day’s work; but the beauty at
their hills and hollows, the music of their gloaming, were as real an
influence in their lives as the breath o’ God that stirred their acres
into life.
“A grand evening,” was all that Yeoman Hirst found to say.
“Ay, grand,” Reuben answered.
They came to the door of Good Intent. “Ye’ll step in, and drink a cup
o’ tea?” said Hirst.
Gaunt was taken by surprise. He hesitated, and flushed hotly as he
recalled his last visit to Good Intent and the end of it. “Thank you,
but I must be getting home,” he answered quietly.
The yeoman looked him in the face, and his smile broadened. “Now, Mr.
Gaunt, I know what ye’re thinking of. Bygones are bygones, surely, if
we’ll let them be. Say I was wrong if ye like, though I shouldn’t like
to own to it. Step in, step in!”
Reuben could not fight against this bluff, hearty courtesy. The yeoman
whistled a farm-lad round to take their horses, then broke into the
house with a tread that shook the rafters. Cilla looked up from the
table which she was laying for tea.
“I’ve brought a guest wi’ me, lile lass,” he said, with a genial roar.
“He was a bit loth to enter, till I persuaded him he’d find a welcome.”
Priscilla was startled, and could not check the sudden flush of
pleasure with which she greeted Reuben. All three were silent and ill
at ease for a moment. The yeoman, seeing the look that passed between
them, wondered if he had done well, after all, to bring Gaunt under his
roof.
“The kettle is boiling, father,” said Cilla, quietly putting an end to
their constraint. “See the cracknels I’ve baked for you to-day--”
Hirst interrupted her by taking one of the crisp bits of pastry between
a thumb and forefinger. “I always had a soft tooth for sweetstuff,” he
said. “Mr. Gaunt, there’s your seat. Cilla, don’t be long in mashing
the tea; we’re a thirsty couple after the ride from Shepston.”
When tea was over, and they settled round the hearth, Gaunt felt a
sense of well-being and content for which there seemed to be no clear
reason. So many details went to the making of his comfort--Cilla’s
face, as she sat half in the firelight, half in the dancing
shadows--the yeoman’s ready laugh--even the lingering scent of buttered
toast which carried homely memories with it. He had a bigger house
at Marshlands, but had never found this fireside glamour there; and
always, as they talked, he kept glancing toward Cilla, wondering that
so slim a lass could bring so much 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 him down 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 i’ gold for ’t.” 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 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.
“Not that he’s fit for ye--”
“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 of 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 down, lass. I’ve earned a fairly
plain glimpse o’ life, after trying for five-and-fifty years 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 is scarce buried yet?” she
murmured, afraid of herself and of all things.
He met her glance frankly, for he had something in 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, and that’s what I’m telling ye. It’s
the lesson men have to learn as lads--and women after they’ve 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 to come in, it was because I owed him a debt, like,
and wanted to pay it. When I asked him at the door to come a second
time, ’twas for a different reason.”
“Yes, father,” said 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 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.”
“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. Get me my pipe, lass,
and say good night, and think ower 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 a little up-stairs 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 thistle-down; 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 about him;
the peat-glow stealing ruddy across the yellow candle-light at Good
Intent and tricking the grave rows of pewter, china and delft 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. “Thinks he’s going
to find a mate to-morrow, and then set to work nest-building. 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 moon--and he heard her sobs as she leaned against the closed door
of the house. He could not disentangle the dead Gaunt from the living,
and Reuben was a standing menace, answering for his father’s sins.
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’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. “You’re growing fond
of Reuben Gaunt, it seems.”
Billy turned with his accustomed quiet. “Not just so fond; rather 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. Gaunt, too sound asleep to hear the doctor’s voice, or Billy’s
slow answer, dreamed quietly of Cilla in her lilac frock--of Cilla,
who carried scent o’ lilac with her, summertide or winter. There was
no memory troubled him to-night of Peggy, and a grave high up 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.