Reuben was sincere in this, so far as his way of life allowed him to be sincere in anything. He was glad to be home again, glad to revisit nooks and corners which he had known in boyhood. Even the wanderers need their rest sometimes, and this man with the queer, wild eyes was fonder of Garth village than he had ever known. “I must take a wife, Priscilla, now that I have something to keep her on,” he went on, leaning against the gate-post and stroking his upper lip. “Marshlands will never thrive unless it has a mistress.” Priscilla looked straight in front of her, with a heedlessness that angered Gaunt. Keen-witted as he was, he should have known that Yeoman Hirst’s daughter was not one to be wooed at the end of two weeks and a day. “Yes, ’twill need a mistress,” she said, indifferently. Her thoughts were all of the new lands that Gaunt had opened to her fancy, and she would have answered, had she been asked the reason of her interest in Reuben, that he was the bringer of stirring news, and heartsome news, into the round of her life at Garth. Gaunt was silent for awhile; wooing had sped so easily with him in times past that contempt or opposition ruffled him. “Suppose you choose my wife for me, Cilla?” he said at last, with would-be playfulness. “Fair or dark is she, and can she manage a dairy and a roomy house?” “I had not thought of it,” said Priscilla, turning her candid eyes on him again. “’Tis for you to settle such grave questions, I should think.” Her laughter hurt him afresh; and, while he was seeking for a way to meet rebuffs he little liked, John Hirst came up the road. Hirst was not one to scowl at any time; but his thick brows came together when he reached the top of the rise and saw these two together. “Crossing homeward by the fields, Priscilla?” he cried, in a voice that startled them like thunder out of a tranquil sky. “Well, so am I, and we’ll just gang together, lassie.” “Morning, Mr. Hirst,” said Gaunt, soon as he had recovered from his surprise. “Morning, Mr. Gaunt,” answered the other gruffly, opening the gate. “Come, Priscilla--we’ll go arm in arm, as your mother came from kirk with me more years ago than I remember.” Priscilla felt a big hand grasp her arm, and found herself, with no time for a good-by to Reuben, moving quickly up the field-path at her father’s side. “Well?” said the farmer, presently. Priscilla did not answer, but released her arm, and set a little distance between them as they crossed the fields. She was angered that her father had shown discourtesy--a thing uncommon with him--to the man who had laid strange, vivid colours on the palette of her fancy.