CHAPTER XXV David the Smith had chosen this same day of spring for his return to Garth, though he had sent no word of his coming to Yeoman Hirst. He remembered the boisterous good-will shown him when he left the old haunts to cross overseas. Because he returned the same single-hearted David who had loved Garth village from his babyhood, he was shy of such another welcome at his home-coming. He would not take the mail from Shepston, the mail which carried Gaunt and Cilla to their betrothal, but walked instead. He wanted to see the daffodils in bloom, in the crofts and the wayside gardens that bordered the highroad. He wanted to be free of chatter, and to feel his two legs carrying him, as a man’s legs should, between the grey, remembered hills. He wanted, most of all, to find Cilla of the Good Intent at home, and to tempt her--God’s pity on the man’s brave simplicity--with tales of other lands. At four of the afternoon he came to Garth, and shied, from old habit, when Widow Lister pattered out to meet him. “Glad to see ye again, David,” she said, coquetting, as she always did, with a hale and well-to-look-at man. “Bless me, what a power o’ heat there must be, yonder over Garth hills. Ye’re freckled and tanned, David. ’Tis good to look at a face like yours; puts one i’ mind o’ sun and hay harvest.” “Oh, I’m well enough; but ’tis Garth for me, I reckon, till I’m taken to the kirkyard, and may be afterwards.” The widow’s face lengthened, from habit, into grave, forbidding lines. “Afterwards is as ye’ve done i’ this life, David.” “Yes,” said David, cheerily. “I’m content to rest on that standby, Widow.” She was silent for awhile, daunted by a strength that was rooted deeper than her shallow soil would ever know. “Your aunt Joanna has no such fear o’ the after life,” she said, with sudden triumph. “She borrowed a tin kettle fro’ me, did Joanna, and she forgot to return it, like, when she married into a heathen land.” “Ay, she’s good at forgetting. But see ye, Widow, I didn’t come all this way to talk o’ tin kettles. I came to see bonnie Garth, with her face new-washed for spring and all the posies out i’ the garden-strips.” With a good-humoured nod he moved on to Good Intent, and found the yeoman leaning over the gate of the seven acre field, watching his lambs with that peculiar air of leisure and detachment from all worry which comes to farmers in and between the bustle of these warm, full-blooded days of spring. “Have your ewes done well, then?” asked David, as quietly as if he had seen Hirst every day during the past months. The yeoman turned with a start. “David! Now, ye startled me, I own. I was just thinking o’ ye, and reckoning ’twould be all about time for ye to be taking shipboard home; and then your voice came sudden-like; and I fancied it must be your ghost, come to tell us you were drowned at sea. There’s the daft fool I’ve grown, David, since you left Garth!”