Gaunt, though he did not know it, had caught something of the panic that troubled all the folk of Shepston. “At the back of his mind,” as he put it to himself, he was sure that Peggy would catch no harm from the scarf at this late day; the harm was done already, or not done; yet he could not rest so long as she was wearing it. “Peggy,” he said, “I want that kerchief you’re wearing.” Peggy o’ Mathewson’s laughed, though her eyes were full of disquiet. “Best buy another, Reuben, if you’re fooling me again. I’ll not let this one go to some lile fool who’s turned her blue eyes on ye and made geese seem swans.” So then he told her--the sun lay low down to Windover Crag by this time--that Pedlar Joe had the fever on him when he sold the kerchief; and again she laughed. “Is that all, Reuben? I thought ’twas worse.” She looked down the moor, and into his face again; and her voice was soft with trouble. “Reuben, ’tis ill when ye doubt the man ye care for. I never cared, save for you; but you--” Gaunt forgot the scarf, forgot the sickness and the hearse and the great distrust that had peopled the High Street at Shepston. “Well?” he asked. “What is amiss, then, if we’re both of the same mind? Peggy, I’ve been fearing for you all the way home from market; I ought to take shame that a parcel of Shepston folk can scare me.” Down below in Garth, Billy had done with his day’s play at the forge, and had wandered out into what he named his green-field’s bed. He made up the pastures and out into the open moor; and here, in a little hollow deep with heather, he lay down, turned twice or thrice till he had made a lair for himself, and breathed a sigh of sheer content. “’Tis a right queer matter to be born daft-witted,” he said to himself. “There’s folk sleeping in Garth yonder at this minute ’twixt four hot walls, and no breath o’ air to help them. Only Fool Billy knows, ’twould seem, what a terrible soft bed a body’s body can find right up at the top o’ the world.” He lay there on his back, and watched the stars, the waning moon whose colour was ivory tinged with saffron, the quiet blue of the sky. The wise folk spoke of the moor as a lonely place, where none could sleep without fear of the ghosts that were known to haunt it. To Billy it was home. If grouse were lying near him in the heather, they were friends; if the old dog-fox from Sharprise Wood chose this track for purposes connected with his larder, Billy was well acquainted with him; as for ghosts, there was only one that troubled him, and this had no dwelling among the marshes and the ling. CHAPTER XVIII Peggy’s high spirits did not forsake her as the time for her wedding drew near. Gaunt was eager, with a dash of haste and recklessness about the matter that appealed to her gipsy temper.