Cilla was looking ahead and his tone misled her. “Surely you have property enough? Marshlands, father always says, is just the right size--big enough to keep a man busy all day and every day, and small enough to walk around it when he finds an idle morning.” “Well, yes. ’Tis a case of Naboth’s vineyard, maybe. At any rate, I shall never care much for Marshlands, unless I get this other property to round it off.” Something in his tone made her glance quickly at him, and it was hard to believe that a year of upward struggle lay between the old Reuben and the new. His face was full of boyish mischief. He looked as if he had known never a care in the world, but had lived always in this warmth of the spendthrift, teeming spring. She understood him better in that moment, understood how easy it had been to name him “running-water,” because they had given him never a chance, until last year, of proving his mettle. He had proved himself, once for all, and now was a boy again until the next summons came. Cilla let her own mood run with his. She knew his meaning now, and would not look at him, and could not trust herself to speak, but the white road, and the green, homely pastures, and the birds that fluttered up the hedge-sides in front of the rattling coach, led out, she knew, to the enchanted lands “beyond Garth hills.” They lay nearer home, these lands, than Cilla of the Good Intent had guessed. They were passing Widow Fletcher’s now, and Will the Driver turned in his seat as they went by. “Am having a holiday, I, Mr. Gaunt,” he laughed. “I won’t say I’m glad, for it wouldn’t be seemly; and I can’t say I’m grieved, for it wouldn’t be true; but the widow, she broke an ankle in trying to catch me up a week ago, just when I’d dodged her for once. Widows are trials, I own, and maybe t’ other lile woman at Garth--her sister--may be laid by for awhile with a sprain, or a touch o’ rheumatiz, or what not. There’s always hope, as the fox said, when he was leaving his tail in the keeper’s trap.” Gaunt laughed in answer, and passed the banter which was true coinage here on the open highway; but Cilla, stealing a glance at him, saw that the grave look had returned. He was thinking of a widow up at Ghyll yonder, who had met life from another, and a braver standpoint. She, too, felt that a chill had touched the warmth and glamour of this drive to Keta’s Well, as if the breeze had shifted suddenly from west to east. She remembered the pool where Mrs. Mathewson and she had met while rescuing sheep from April snow, recalled the struggle between Reuben and Billy, and the widow’s tale of what had happened long ago at Marshlands. The tale had recurred to her many times during these past weeks, and with it a distrust of Reuben against which she struggled loyally. “What are ye thinking of?” he asked, breaking a long silence.