The moon lay young, slender as a sickle, over the parched lands of Garth. Cilla herself, as she stood in the roadway, looked cool and slender, too, in her white gown, though she was full of strange disquiet. Her modesty had taken fright. It was well enough to be anxious for Reuben’s safety, well enough to seek news of him as often as she could; but she knew that it was more than friendship, this restless eagerness for news. And Peggy o’ Mathewson’s should have been a bride by now; and the peat was scarcely smoothed above her grave. Cilla, for all her daintiness, her love of clean thinking and clean doing, was human as her neighbours, and subject to those gusts of warm and reckless feeling which are apt to scatter the habits of a lifetime. If she had been told of another who waited, as she had done, for news of a bridegroom widowed before his wedding-day, she would have thought lightly of her. Yet she could only picture Reuben up at the lonely, hill-top farm; could only pray for his safety and know that her prayers came from a warmer heart than she ought to carry. She turned instinctively to Good Intent. Her father would be sitting by the hearth, big of his body, big in charity. She would step in, and have a talk with him. The yeoman was sitting in his chair, as she had pictured him. But his pipe lay cold in his hand, and he motioned her to a seat in the settle-corner opposite. “Cilla, I’ve had a talk or two with the doctor,” he began. She waited, suppressing a quiet laugh that he, too, had gone out for stolen interviews with the lay priest at Garth. “It seems Gaunt chose to go in to Ghyll Farm and to stay there. He knew what it meant before he crossed the door-stone. I wouldn’t believe it, until the doctor told me it was so.” “Yes, father.” “Well, be durned if I’d have done it.” “Oh, yes; oh, indeed, you would have done it, father; ’tis the sort of call you’d have answered, but it was not asked of you.” “Fiddle-de-dee,” said the yeoman. “Black Fever would always scare me. Give me a runaway horse, and I’ll handle the reins--but the fever--’tis a waiting game, lile Cilla, and I could never play such. I’ve a sort of envy, like, for men who can.” Priscilla lit a spill for his pipe. She filled his glass for him, and set it by his side. And then she waited. “Seems I’ve treated Gaunt amiss,” said her father by and by. “All folk do in Garth.” “Ay, they did; but I was down i’ Shepston to-day, and they had the news, and folk were puzzled. They fancied that Gaunt was better nor like--in fact, Cilla, they seemed minded to turn their faces about and overdo their praising of him.” Cilla spread her hands to the peat-glow, and her face was full of tenderness. “I told you so i’ the spring, father, but you would not listen.” The yeoman was uneasy. Praise was due to Gaunt, and yet he distrusted the man. “He comes of a bad breed, Cilla, and I’m farmer enough to know that ye don’t rear good stock from such.”