Peggy could not rest quiet in the road below. She had climbed to the brink of the moor by now, and three or four of the crowd had followed her. It was Peggy’s day, and she wished it to be full. Gaunt might be this and that, she told herself, her eyes fixed on the moor above; but she would forgive him fickleness and all if she could dance on the green to-night, and know that he was the winner of the race. “Gaunt climbs like a wildcat,” said a tough, old yeoman, standing at Peggy’s side. “Climbs like a man,” answered Peggy, and kept her eyes on the hill-top. Bownas had reached the flag by now, and had turned to follow Gaunt down the moor. From below, Peggy o’ Mathewson’s could hear the eager uproar of the crowd. None thought of the seven stragglers who followed; it was a race between the homelander and the “foreigner,” and Gaunt himself, though the blood was surging in his ears, could hear a stifled echo of the roar that meant good-will to him. Gaunt had been used to say that he won his races because his wind was a special gift, in token that his legs were short. He needed the gift now; for, out of practice as he was, the straight, unswerving climb had punished him. Bownas was still following his bent, down-hill as up-hill. He chose the gentler slopes, while Gaunt ran helter-skelter down, straight for the wall that guarded the pastures from the moor. “The wildcat’s won!” shouted the old yeoman at Peggy’s ear. “He’s a furlong forrarder, and all easy-going now.” A long, brown line of shale lay in Gaunt’s path. He would not turn aside, but trusted to his old trick of sliding down it, feet foremost, with the shingle scattering round his knees. “Oh, be durned!” muttered the yeoman. “’Tis all over wi’ Gaunt! Just when he had the race i’ his hands, an’ all.” Peggy’s face was white; for she had seen the runner trip against a stone which did not yield to his foot, as the shale had done. So great was Gaunt’s speed that he could not think of checking himself; head over heels he went, and landed on his feet again as if by a miracle. For a second or two he stood dazed by the shock, and Bownas got to within fifty yards of him. Then, shaking himself together and setting his face as hard as a flint, Gaunt started down the moor again. “He’ll break his neck one day at yond job,” said the yeoman to Peggy. “Glad he hasn’t done as much to-day. Want to see him win, I.” The runners were scaling the wall between moor and pasture now, and Gaunt was a trifle the quicker in getting over. He passed so close to Peggy that she could have touched him. “Run!” she panted. “Reuben, you have it! You have it, lad!” He heard her, and so did Bownas o’ Shap; and both men raced forward with a quickened sense of rivalry.