“You’re needed, Reuben,” she said, touching him on the shoulder. He was on his feet at once; and to the widow it was restful to find a man who answered so quickly to the call of need. “Well?” he asked, rubbing his eyes. “She’s all but gone. I thought, like, ye might care--” He went up the stair and she followed him. Gaunt, in days past, had needed the whip across his back; he found it now. There was no lifting of Peggy’s eyes to his, no word to bridge the passage. He took her hands in his, but they were dumb. There was a stifled breath, as of one who seeks for air in an overcrowded room and that was all. Peggy o’ Mathewson’s had gone out along the black, hot fever-road. The widow looked at Gaunt, and pushed him gently from the room. “Poor lad,” was all she said. “’Tis one more trouble added to the peck for me--but ye’re not used to it.” Gaunt went out through the porch, and across to the gate of the croft, and stood there, leaning over the top bar, just as Peggy had when she said good-by to him. A great stillness lay over the lands; there was no movement of bird, or sheep, or cattle; no breeze stirred, and the sun, stark in the everlasting blue, seemed the one unwearied thing in nature. A stillness lay, too, over Reuben Gaunt. He was groping toward the future. A few days since, Peggy had kissed him at the gate here, had bidden him return as quickly as he could. After that there was silence. Though he had seen her, watched beside her bed, no word had passed between them. Not a sign of recognition had come to soften the blow. He could only recall the girl’s vigour, her glowing health, and contrast them with what lay behind him at the farm. Gradually the numbness left him, and the first sharp sense of grief intruded. He dwelt unduly on the ugliness and horror of Peggy’s death, as though they mattered, now that the soul had passed. He thought, in a vague, haphazard fashion, of many ways in which he might have dealt better with her. He had a senseless longing to have back that day at Linsall Fair, when he had tempted her to meet the fever. They might have chosen twenty other roads than that to Linsall. Mrs. Mathewson, with her creed that was old and pagan as the moor itself, would have told him that he was not to blame in this--that the road to Linsall Fair was planned out before ever Peggy lay in her cradle. Gaunt had known pain of body; but this anguish that grew keener every moment was new to him. He had no knowledge of the way to meet it, and such ignorance makes all men cowardly. He had lost all sense of time, until a glance at the sun showed that it was lying over Dingle Nook. He had spent two hours here at the gate, it seemed. Again he blamed himself, and thought of Widow Mathewson, and went back to the farm. She met him at the door. “’Twas kind o’ ye, Reuben, to leave me to my work; but, then, ye’re always kind these days.” “Thought I had left you in the lurch, mother.”