It was to be the bitterest winter known for fifty years in Strathgarth. Yet, when December came, and the frost strengthened its grip, and all the land began to wear a pinched and sullen look, Gaunt felt the warmth of life increase. He lost his dogged recollection of former slights when meeting his neighbours at market or along the highways, just as they had long been willing to admit that their settled judgment of a man might, for once, be wrong. They heard his laugh less often now, but it was heartier when it came, and one they liked to hear. By gradual stages he was settling into his true position as master of the biggest and the oldest farm in Garth. Hard work was asked of him that winter. Before Christmas there was a three days’ snow that drifted over every sheep ungathered from the higher lands. When his own ewes were recovered--and he took more than his share of a labour asking great patience and endurance--he made his way as best he could to Ghyll Farm, getting along by the wall-tops mostly, to see how Widow Mathewson was faring. He found her helping the man to clear the last fall of snow away from the space between the house-front and the well; her cheeks were ruddy, and her voice rang crisp and almost merry, when she saw Reuben struggling through the croft. “Bless me, but this has been what parson would call a visitation!” she cried. “’Tis sweeping we’ve been, an’ sweeping all ower again an hour or two after; we’d have lost our way to the well-spring if we hadn’t. It was kind o’ ye to come, Reuben. You’d no easy journey, I reckon, up th’ moor. It must hev been like climbing a feather-bed set on end.” “So it was, mother, when the walls didn’t help me; but I’d a fancy you might need me.” “Now had ye?” said the widow crisply. She was always apt to lose ten years of her sorrow when fighting one day’s inclement weather. “Because o’ my sheep all overblown up the moor? Ye should never waste pity, Reuben; there’s little enough about, and ’tis precious, like.” “You have them safe, then?” “Safe? I learned farming while ye were i’ your cradle, and that means I learned weather, too. We’d a lile soft spell o’ warmth last week? And ye never dreamed it meant snow to come?” “I didn’t,” Gaunt admitted. “I fancied an open spell was coming.” “And you bred i’ Strathgarth, and to know so little of her whimsies! That’s how she fools ye every winter--a bout o’ cold that starves the marrow i’ your bones, and then a week o’ softness just to ’tice ye on. Oh, I’m old to Strathgarth, lad; and soon as ever the warm snap came, I says to lad Michael here: ‘Michael,’ I says, ‘we’ll gather the ewes under shelter.’ And Michael, being young and a man, and a bit daft, says ‘no.’ And I says ‘yes,’ and had to threaten to clout his lugs before he found persuasion. A few folk find religion, Reuben; but ’tis persuasion finds the many.”