She checked herself. “Father, there’s nothing so idle as thoughts,” she said, standing straight to her comely height, and seeking wisdom from the other’s bigness and look of well-being. “’Tis time I got to bed, if I’m to be fit for any work in the morning. Good night, father.” She lingered on the last words, and Hirst, who was no fool so far as observation went, laughed quietly over his pipe when she had gone. “She’s tender, she, with the old man,” he muttered. “Bless me, if the lile fool hasn’t been thinking o’ Gaunt again. I know that note i’ her voice. She had it i’ spring, and it put me in mind of a blackbird’s when she’s all about building her nest. Well, I’ve known queer cattle i’ my time, but the queerest of all is women. I like ’em, for all that.” He tried to banish Gaunt from his thoughts, as a man of no account, and could not. Like Cilla, he was just--and for that reason was laughed at now and then by his neighbours--and he knew that Gaunt, if it were true that he had stayed by choice at Ghyll, was a better man to-day than he. “Mind ye, I don’t believe the tale,” he said stubbornly, stirring the peats with needless vigour. “Dan Foster’s lad is like others--light o’ feet, and light o’ thought. He brought a wrong tale down to Garth; but we shall know, I reckon, by the morning.” Cilla, in her room above, was less anxious to get to bed betimes than she had seemed. She leaned at the open casement, and watched the half moon ride the sky. Not a breath of air came from the steaming night; it was cooler within doors than without. The apple-tree whose branches had lit the window-panes with tender green in spring, showed dry and drooping leaves; its sickly fruit lay shrivelled, asking only for a breeze to come and snap the withered stalks. Even the hills, ranging out and out across the clearness of the night, suggested weariness instead of strength. It was weather to help no man’s crops; but the fever throve on it. Cilla had no thought of heat. She had returned to the cool days of spring, when Gaunt had made her feel the beauty of this land which she had known from childhood. She cared less for the man, maybe, than for the glamour he had brought her; and each proof that he was strong, was proof, too, that the glamour had not lied to her. When at last she got to bed, it was only to fall asleep and dream of Keta’s Well, and of saunters by the stream, and softer golds and deeper crimsons than she had ever seen in the skies at Garth, until Reuben came to teach her what the homeland meant. Once she stirred in her sleep. “David, dreams cannot last,” she murmured. “You know they cannot. David, come home again to Garth!” Then afterwards she dreamed quiet thoughts of Reuben; and they were wandering up the streamway that led to Keta’s Well. CHAPTER XX At ten of the next morning Widow Mathewson crept down the stairway at Ghyll Farm. Gaunt had snatched what sleep he could on the settle in the living-room.