She grew silent when they reached the glen, but the peace did not leave her face. It was a pleasant bed, she felt, they had made for Peggy here, now that the snow and the east wind had gone, and the stream was free to sing its litanies. The rowan was in its first leaf, rippling under the least touch of the breeze; from the moor came the strong, eager scent of ling and greening bilberry; above them the stars showed one by one, while all along the western rises a wisp of afterglow lay like a saffron mantle over the sleepy hill-tops. “Reuben,” she said by and by, “I want to talk to ye, and I fancied we could best find words up here. Ye’ll need a mistress soon for Marshlands.” Well as Gaunt knew her liking for abrupt, plain speech, he was startled. His thoughts had been all of the past year’s heedlessness and tragedy; he could not rid himself of the figure that seemed to stand beside the grave--a radiant ghost, with gipsy eyes and straight, lithe figure, and a crimson kerchief knotted at the breast. There was no looking forward, here where the wind and the sky were quiet, and the still moor watched its dead. “Nay, not that look, Reuben!” said Mrs. Mathewson, laying a gentle hand on his arm. “I never was one for back reckonings. It’s all well enough, while the grief’s on ye, to look behind; but there comes a time to look forward.” “It was only last autumn she died, mother.” “Just so, but there’s been fire and torment for ye in between--oh, I know, Reuben!--and the clock ticks very slow at such times. Would ye listen once in a way while I talk to ye? There’s decency i’ grief; and, after that, there’s a man’s need to look at the track ahead. We’re here for this world’s business, Reuben, till we die.” He was looking at her with a puzzled question in his eyes, as if she had roused him from some nightmare and was telling him that the light of day was sweeping through the windows of his prison. “After that,” went on the other, “well, Peggy’s wiser than me by now, for I’ve no notion o’ what happens afterward. We live on, I reckon; though Mathewson, being fond o’ sleep at all times, would have it that we never wake up again. I used to tell him that I came of a wiry stock, and knew we were meant, like, to live on--in some sort o’ heaven, maybe, seeing what a lot o’ t’ other place we get i’ this life.” There was something clean and vigorous, like a wind from the heath, in this woman’s outlook on the life that had harassed her, on the life that was to come. If her faith lay deep and hard to find, her fearlessness and honesty had in them the same massive power that underlay Billy’s oddities. Unconsciously Gaunt yielded to her mood. He had spent himself generously to serve this late-found mother, and it was her turn now to stretch a helping hand to him.