Gaunt bought the mare for Peggy, and gave orders that it should be sent that day to Marshlands; but he had little heart either in the bargaining or the purchase. As he walked up the High Street toward the inn again, a hearse was moving slowly to the churchyard which fronted and looked down upon the road. They told him that only one day of the last fifteen had passed without a burial, and some days there had been three or four. It was brought home to him at last that the Black Fever was no boggart invented by mothers to frighten wayward bairns; he saw the scourge now as it really was, as a pestilence unlike all others, save the plague which many hundred years ago, folk said, had destroyed whole villages, and had made thriving townships into wasted hamlets. Indeed, the fever, in a less degree, had that power to weaken men by terror which the plague had had long since. It was market-day, and a busy day, along the High Street; but uneasiness and gloom showed plainly on all but the most reckless faces, and farmer-men, ashamed of a weakness they could not control, would glance at farmer-men, seeking for the telltale patches of mulberry-red which spelled infection. Gaunt opened his lungs to the breeze when he was clear of Shepston. He knew that there was danger to himself, but had dismissed the thought; his cowardice was all for Peggy. He was glad to be out among clean fields again, with the open road in front of him, and none to talk of the fever. He walked straight up to Ghyll Farm after reaching home, and Peggy was standing at the gate of the croft, looking down the moor. She half looked for him, and for that reason had fastened the crimson handkerchief round her throat; she had tied and untied it before her cracked mirror, with the honest coquetry which a woman finds when she knows that one man only has a claim on it. Reuben saw the scarf, as soon almost as he caught sight of the waiting figure. The sunlight, stark and dry as the fields it had scorched, caught the warm colour of the kerchief. “You look tired, Reuben,” said Peggy o’ Mathewson’s, after a quiet glance at his face. “Well, yes,” he answered carelessly. “It was a hot drive into Shepston, and the fools would talk of nothing but their fever. I begin to think they’re proud of it, Peggy.” “They’ve got used to it, you see,” said the girl, with something of her mother’s tart knowledge of the world. “’Tis queer, Reuben, how soon ye get used to a thing, even if ’tis bad, and seem to miss it when it goes.” He scarcely heard her. His eyes were fixed on the crimson scarf, and she smiled happily as she followed his glance. “Yes, I’m wearing your gift, lad. Mother chided me just now--said ’twas no sort o’ fancy-stuff to wear, when there were cattle needed milking by and by. I said you’d given it me at Linsall Fair and the lile, soft beasts would milk no worse because I wore it.”