Billy the Fool, after dusting the smithy fire with coke and smudge, had settled himself to sleep again; but he was awake on the instant when David’s footsteps sounded on the roadway. He rose, and shook himself with a big, heedless satisfaction. “I’ve been a-dreaming, David,” was his greeting. “Dreamed I was wise, like ye are at most times--saving when Miss Priscilla comes.” “Ay?” said the other, patting Billy on the shoulder. “I didn’t like it, David! Glad to waken is Billy the Fool. There wasn’t no frolic in’t.” “I can believe you, lad. What news, Billy, since I went up street?” It was the habit in Garth village to ask Billy for news, however many times a day you met him, though none could say how the idle custom had first come into use. “Ay, there’s news. I’ve been at my games again, David the Smith.” A smile broadened slowly across the placid face, while the blacksmith listened good-humouredly. “Never met your like for games, Billy,” he said, fingering his tools after the fashion of a man who means to begin work by and by, but not just yet. David, indeed, was thinking less of work, and less of Billy, than of the encounter in the mistal. Reuben Gaunt had come like a shadow between the springtime and himself, had blurred the sun for him: keen to foresee, as slow men often are, the blacksmith felt as if a blight had fallen on Garth village, checking the warmth, holding the green buds in their sheaths. Yet Billy soon claimed his ear. “I’d looked to your fire,” went on the natural, “and stepped out into the road, to see what time o’ day it was. Perhaps a half-hour since it was--and what d’ye think, David?” “Couldn’t guess, lad, couldn’t guess.” “Well, there was a littlish man, all dressed up as if ’twere Sunday; and he came down the road, and I knew he’d been to Good Intent.” David glanced sharply up. “How did you know that?” “Miss Priscilla lives there. All the younger men--and happen a few o’ the old uns too--will always be wending Good Intent way when the spring comes in. Habit o’ theirs, David--habit o’ theirs! I go that way myself sometimes.” The blacksmith, not for the first time, was puzzled by Billy the Fool. The natural’s unerring instinct for all that made for the primitive in bird or beast or human-folk, when coupled with his child’s disdain of everyday good sense, would have troubled keener wits than David’s. He recognized Reuben Gaunt, moreover, from the other’s description, and he fingered his tools no longer, but followed Billy’s story. “Came whistling down the road, did the littlish chap. I wondered, like, at what, for ye or me could have outsized him two or three times over.”