“Bide where ye are!” he called sharply. “I want you to go back to Marshlands, and tell them I shall not be home for weeks. Have you got that message into your head, Dan?” “Ay,” said the lad, recovering from his bewilderment. “And then go to Good Intent, and tell Miss Cilla that for God’s sake she is not to come nor send to Ghyll here.” Gaunt, with a backward thought of Peggy lying in the up-stairs room, was ashamed of his eagerness that Cilla should be saved. “You’ll not forget, Dan?” “No,” said the boy, his native curiosity conquering the last trace of fear. “No, I’ll not forget, Mr. Gaunt; but what mun I say is t’ reason, like, that Miss Good Intent can’t get her eggs? She’s main set on getting that clutch, she is, an’ she’ll fancy it war me as disappointed her.” Gaunt laughed harshly. “The reason? Tell her that the fever’s come to Ghyll.” Like a wounded rabbit the lad sought cover. To him the fever meant all that was terrible, mysterious; he had heard his elders talk of it these months past beside the hearth; he feared that, even at this distance and with the clean breath of the heath between himself and Ghyll, he might be overtaken by the pestilence. Gaunt watched him run far down the moor, and turn the shoulder of a hillock, and then he went indoors again. Mrs. Mathewson was sitting by the hearth. “I’ve sent word to Marshlands,” he said, taking a seat in the settle-corner, as if the widow and he were friends of long standing. “They’ll not look for me till I come home again; and meanwhile the farm and all that will be cared for.” The widow lifted her head and looked at Gaunt with the keen glance which, until to-day, he had found disconcerting. No anxiety, no brooding instinct of disaster, could check the tongue of this woman who had seen life’s soft illusions leave her one by one. “You’re not likely to reach home again, Reuben.” “Likely not,” he answered, feeling for his pipe and filling it with careful fingers. “There’s few would miss me, come to think of it, save you and Peggy.” “I’d miss ye, Reuben Gaunt?” she snapped, with a tired effort to resist her new outlook on the man. “Yes, you, mother. D’ye hear Peggy moaning up above us? ’Twas time that I, or another, came to help ye to bear it.” Widow Mathewson reached out for her black clay pipe, and took a bit of live peat from the fire, and lit the half-filled bowl. “We mun as weel smoke in company, Reuben,” she said. They smoked in friendship for awhile. “Gaunt,” said the widow suddenly, “d’ye know what fear means or what death means, or are ye a likelier lad than I thought ye?” “I know what death means, mother,” said Reuben, as he moved from the settle-corner to stir the peat-fire into life. “I’ve learned to-day.” Again a silence fell between them. Then the widow lit her pipe afresh, and her voice was gentler than Gaunt had known it hitherto. “You’ve fooled a good few women i’ your time, Reuben; but I fancy ye’re not by way o’ fooling now.”