The smith had lit his own pipe, and was listening with something of the old content to Billy’s familiar line of thought. All the fool’s interest in life, trace it deep enough, centred round growth of some kind. It might be growth of the plants under sheltered banks, that caught the first footsteps of the spring, which claimed attention from him; it might be the mother-work of birds when they hatched their eggs in the many nests he over-watched, or the whitening of the pastures when ewes began to drop their lambs; it might be the forging of an iron rail, or the building of a wall; but the instinct at the root of all his pleasures was growth. Untrammelled, as no other man in Garth was, by the frets and small indignities of daily life, Billy had learned insight into the deeper truths. He could write no verses, nor wished to; but he moved through the quiet village life, for all that, a great poet, not of his own dales only, but of the world. David’s nature was akin to his in many ways, and at times such as this, when Billy let his heart peep out and showed why toil was play to him, the smith was apt to feel a touch of awe, as if he listened to a greater than himself who was talking of eternal verities. The next moment Billy would lose his high, abstracted look, and would return to some foolish detail of the world about him. He did so now. “I’ve your money all ready for ye, David,” he said, going to the far corner of the smithy and reaching down a small, square box from the shelf. “Made the box myself, soon as ever ye left Garth, and made a slit, I did, big enough for money to go through, but not for fingers. Te-he, David! Not for fingers, I reckon.” David was puzzled as the other jingled the coins as he crossed the floor, and placed his money-box in the smith’s hands. “What is all this, Billy?” he asked. “Play money,” said the fool impassively. “Ye see, David, I’ve no more use for coins than for pebbles i’ a stream, so I saved ’em up against your home-coming. Charged terrible high prices, I, for shoeing a horse; and folk laughed, and they paid it, they did, because ’twas only Fool Billy; and there’ll be a right proper nest-egg ready for ye, David.” The tears were in David’s eyes at last. He had gone on a wasted errand to another land, and had returned empty of thanks and pocket; he had come cheerily home, ready to start afresh with strong hands and a clean conscience as his only capital, and had encountered Widow Lister and her anxiety touching a tin kettle borrowed years ago. He had looked down from Hirst’s croft at a strip of sunlit highroad, and had seen a pair of lovers, full of spring’s tender insolence and right-of-way. All had slipped from under his feet, all save Billy the Fool, whose pleasure, like his own, was to give--always to give, asking no return, claiming only a pipeful of tobacco at the day’s end, and a tranquil smoke over the morrow’s gifts to other folk.