“Nay, lass,” Mrs. Mathewson would say. “Ye’ve bided long for Reuben, and ’tis a lile biding-time enough I’ve set him, surely. There’s no daughter o’ mine going to come pretty-come-quick to his call, just at the minute he cares to whistle.” And Peggy would laugh, and tell herself that she was in no great haste for wedlock, after all. She asked for nothing beyond the present happiness. Strong at the churn, clear of vision, quick to see shortcomings in her neighbours, Peggy o’ Mathewson’s had yielded altogether to her love for Gaunt. He had put cobwebs over her eyes, as the Garth folk said; for she heard the fairies sing, when at nights she went up to the beck that trickled under the rowans, and looked down at the lights of Marshlands, and pictured Reuben there. Towards the end of the waiting-time, Gaunt rode up to Ghyll and told them that he had to be away in the Midlands for a week. His father, in one of the buying fits that came on him at times, had bought property down there, and he had to look to it. “’Twill be a wedding-gift for you, Peggy,” he said at parting. “My lad, I want no wedding-gifts. If ye must go, ye must go, an’ good luck to ye; but, Reuben, never talk o’ gifts. The red kerchief ye bought me at the Fair was enough for me--that, and what ye whispered on the home-way walk.” They were standing at the moor’s edge, and peace was stealing up from the hollows. After the sun’s heat and the weariness, the dusk had laid gentle fingers on the land. There was no limit to the heath, seen by this magical, soft light. Sharprise, crimson and gold and purple where the last of the sunset caught his crest, seemed to bound it on one side; but Peggy, looking out with practised eyes, could see further hills, and hills beyond, each putting on its nightcap of saffron haze. Light scents, stifled by the sun, began to creep abroad. It was a gloaming such as few could see without a quickened sense of the big life behind all frets and worries of the long day’s business. For Peggy o’ Mathewson’s it was home. These darkening hollows, the rough, winding ridges reaching out to the spaces where, in some heathen way of worship, she always sought her God, the cool, faint smell of the bracken, and the ling, were all that spelled life and freedom for Peggy. The gloaming’s quiet, Gaunt’s nearness, softened her reckless spirits, but could not check her laughter. “Oh, Reuben, I am daft!” she said, putting both hands into his. “Thought I could hold my own, I, and I’m thinking only o’ ye. Will ye come back, or will ye not--and are ye true, or are ye not--and all such moonshine nonsense. Reuben, I’ve been happy these last days. Ye wouldn’t spoil it all?” “Not lightly,” said Reuben, as he kissed her good-by, and went down the moor. The next day Peggy was listless and out of heart. She fancied the heat ailed her, though until now she had been careless of all extremes of weather. Widow Mathewson noticed the change, as she smoked her pipe by the hearth that night.