Shepston was busy when he reached the town. He stabled his horse at the Norton Cross tavern, and walked down the High Street in search of the mare he meant to get for Peggy. Half down the street he heard himself hailed by name, and turned. He saw Mother Lambert’s weather-beaten face, standing behind her stall as she had stood on the green at Linsall Fair. “Morning,” said Gaunt, with the heedless nod of old acquaintance. He was passing on, but she checked him. “I saw ye last at Linsall, Mr. Gaunt. D’ye mind the pedlar there?” “Why, yes.” He was impatient and anxious to move forward. “I bought a fairing from him, and his face, I fancied, was more fiery with drink than usual.” Mother Lambert looked gravely at him across the trumpery wares that covered her stall. “Best speak no ill o’ the dead, sir. The pedlar’s dead--dead o’ the fever three days ago. It was fever that mottled his face, an’ he said to me as he stood on the green after ye’d bought your fairing for Peggy o’ Mathewson’s--he owned, he did, that he couldn’t feel just hisseln, like, though he meant to plod on and be merry.” Gaunt’s face was white. He had no thought of Cilla now, but remembered only the lass who had watched him win a race, the lass who had been tender to his failings and buoyant in her love for him. “Are you speaking truth?” he asked. “Well, yes. I mostly do, save when I’ve wares to sell; and business, Mr. Gaunt, is another basket of eggs, as the saying goes.” “I’ve laughed at the fever-dread till now,” he said, after a troubled silence. “For myself, I take chances of that sort of thing as they come; but ’tis different when there’s a doubt that Peggy may have caught it. Surely you’ve to come closer to it, and stay longer with it, than we did that day at Linsall?” “What, for harm to come on’t? Nay! I’ve seen plenty o’ fever i’ my time, an’ I tell ye that kerchief ye bought for Peggy o’ Mathewson’s was enough in itself to gi’e it to her. Poor Peggy! They allus said--those ’at were jealous--that her liking for bright colours would bring her to grief one day.” Mother Lambert nodded sagely after Gaunt had left her. She had lived a hard, roving life, had long since learned to look at her neighbours with eyes unclouded by overmuch feeling; and she told herself now, with a quiet, impersonal wonder, that there was a real change in the man. “Did ye see Reuben Gaunt go down street just now?” she asked a crony, who came from a neighbouring stall for gossip. “Ay. Straight-set-up, as usual, and a bonnie lile figure to catch a lass’s fancy. There’s never much change in Gaunt.” “Well, now, there is a change, and that’s th’ odd part on’t. He’s learned to think for another first, ’stead of himself, and that means a deal. Eh, but men are bothersome cattle! Ye think ye know ’em, right to th’ back o’ their minds, an’ all of a sudden they turn just contrary-like.”