It was no ’prentice hand he turned to farming matters, after all. The routine of it he knew by training; but the instinct toward it lay deeper than one man’s life could ever sound. And the faces of the lazy hinds grew longer day by day, and Michael went whistling about his work. It was soon after Cilla’s meeting with him in Raindrift Wood that she was caught by Widow Lister, passing down Garth’s highway. “Oh, good day, Miss Cilla,” she said briskly. “Ye look lile an’ bonnie, if a plain cottage-body might say so without offence. See my bit of a garden here, an’ how the rain has watered it.” Cilla halted, as all good-natured people did who accepted Widow Lister as a load added by habit to the day’s work. She praised the snapdragons, the asters, the marigolds, which, thanks to constant watering through the drought, reared gallant heads to the quiet September sunlight. Then she waited, knowing that this was the prelude to some plea for help, or to some need for gossip. “I hear queer news o’ Mr. Gaunt these days,” said the widow, with a stolen glance at Cilla. “They tell me he’s a changed man, since he was daft enough to step into Ghyll when he hadn’t any need to.” “Man enough, you meant?” put in Cilla quietly. “Ay, well, ’twas like him, anyway, to go seeking a spot where trouble was, an’ then to run his head straight into ’t--though, of course,” she added with a sigh of demure resignation, “’tis not for me to judge my betters.” Cilla smiled impatiently, for it was useless to be angry with this woman who eluded censure as she had eluded all life’s sharp edges. “Then why judge them, Mrs. Lister?” she asked briskly. “Oh, I only say what I hear, and I niver have no faith myseln i’ sudden conversions. When my man war alive, I war most frightened when he had his serious, sober fits on him. I knew he’d break out worse nor iver when he made a fresh start for th’ Elm Tree Inn. Mr. Gaunt, ye see, is as God made him--an’ his father’s training no way bettered a poor job--an’ that’s where ’tis.” Cilla turned after a farewell that was colder than her wont, and saw the widow stooping tranquilly over her flower-beds. Mrs. Lister, indeed, seemed the incarnation of peaceful Garth--a trim, little figure tending a trim, little garden-patch that fronted the roadway, with the sun finding auburn streaks in the smooth, well-ordered hair that should have shown a grey patch or two by now. And, in spite of herself, Priscilla smiled; the widow was so gentle a wasp to look at, and yet her sting was always at Garth’s service. Fever and the dread which had made strong farmer-men ashamed, grew half-forgotten by the village as September neared its end. Gaunt still overlooked the work at Marshlands, still wondered that this love o’ land grew dearer to him day by day. And sometimes he met Cilla in the fields, or on the roadway; and their friendship was quiet and sunny as the light that lay about the hazel copses.