Widow Lister was patrolling her door-front when he went by. “There’s luck for a body,” muttered Hirst, ruefully, as he caught sight of the plump little figure. “Enjoying a walk i’ the snow?” he asked, as he went by. “Well, I’ve had enough of it myself, trapesing all up and down the pastures since dawn.” “A lone body must do something,” answered the widow plaintively. “I get weary-like o’ my thoughts, sitting wi’ the firelight only for company.” “I dare say, I dare say,” assented Hirst, his big, foolish heart melted at once by this deftly suggested picture of the lonely hearth. “Cilla must come in oftener, to chat wi’ ye at nights.” “Or perhaps ye’d find time now and then to step in yourself?” murmured the other, her eyes lifted “kitten-soft” to his in the moonlight. “There’s something in the way a man sits in his chair an’ the smell of his pipe smoke that’s cheering to a body.” Hirst was as free from vanity as most hearty, well-set-up men, but he had felt more than one doubt of the widow’s friendliness in years gone by; and to-night he took a hasty step or two away from her, like a bird that sees the snare being set. “Why, yes!” he roared. “To be sure, I’ll step in some night, and bring Cilla with me--and bring Cilla with me. Ye’ll have David back in Garth, too, in the spring.” “I’m glad of that,” said the widow. “There’s that little job still waiting to be done, and it’s rankled a bit, as I told ye; and now I can give him a piece o’ my mind.” “Humph,” growled Hirst, as he moved down the street. “Good night to ye. I’d thought ye might like to see David back for his own sake, not for what he can do for ye.” As he neared the forge, a broad shaft of crimson lay across the blue-white, moonlit road, a vivid splash of colour that flickered in long, waving lines. “So Billy’s at play. Never knew such a lad for playing early and playing late. He’ll be glad o’ my news, I reckon,” thought Hirst, as he moved to the smithy door and stood looking in. Dan Foster’s lad was busy at the bellows, and Billy was standing at his anvil. He looked a huge, heroic figure as he brought the hammer down, his arms thick and brawny, his head throwing out a fantastic shadow of itself on the wall behind. A cheerful scent came from within the forge, an odour made up of red-hot iron, and fire heat, and hoof parings from recent shoeing. The yeoman would know that smell of Garth forge, bringing memories of other days with it, if you set him blindfold, after years of absence, at the door. The contrast, too, between the nipping frost one side the threshold, the royal warmth on the other, was pleasant, like a spring day found unexpectedly at Christmas time. “Billy, my lad, David comes back with the spring,” said Hirst, his natural voice striking easily across the uproar of the bellows and the anvil.