Outside the house at Marshlands, as Gaunt went to sleep, Billy the Fool watched the darkened windows. He was not homeless, because he had the open air about him, and a bed all ready in the crisp dry bracken up above. He had no lack of friends; the birds and the four-footed folk saw to that. Yet to-night he was restless and ill at ease. “Billy could never sort out his thoughts, like,” as his neighbours said of him; but he could feel, and could remember, and his griefs and joys, because they were instinctive, were poignant and keen. To-night he did not grudge Gaunt his house, his cosy bed, his riches; he pitied him for such barren wealth. It was Cilla’s welfare that troubled him. Whenever he was free of his “play” at the smithy, he had shadowed these two of late, always with the sense that harm might come to Cilla if she were unprotected in Gaunt’s company. At the lad’s heart to-night, as he stood under Reuben’s window, were rage and pity for the scene ended long ago at Marshlands here. He saw Reuben’s father send his mother out from the grey porch on his left--the porch, whose limestone white and lichen grey were limned clearly by the light of the full moon--and he heard her sobs as she leaned against the closed door of the house. He could not disentangle the dead Gaunt from the living, and Reuben was a standing menace, answering for his father’s sins. Billy, at this moment, was a menace, and one not fanciful at all. He was content to wait till dawn, to watch for Gaunt’s coming out from the grey porch. He knew his strength, and meant to use it. A bridle-way ran close to the Marshlands fence, and the doctor, riding home from a late round, glanced at the moonlit front of the house. He saw Billy’s fat hulk, and from long experience knew that there was danger in the set of the man’s figure, his big head lifted to the casement up above. “Give ye good e’en, Billy,” he said, reining up. “You’re growing fond of Reuben Gaunt, it seems.” Billy turned with his accustomed quiet. “Not just so fond; rather t’ other way, doctor, as a body’s body might say.” “Well, then, come catch my stirrup, Billy, and ’twill be play for ye to ride home beside me.” Fool Billy paused, as a dog does when he is divided between duty to his pleasure and duty to his master. It was the word “play” that enticed him, as the doctor knew it would. He laughed abroad to the blue-grey face of the moonlight, and vaulted the fence and clutched a stirrup. The madness had gone from him, and left him a child again. “Well, then,” he said, “well, then, doctor, and as a body might say, I was always one for playing.”