These farmer-folk, who could guide a plough, turned all to Billy the Fool, who could not guide his own reason. They waited for him to tell the cause of their ailment--an ailment of his own discovering, not of theirs--as if he had been the village doctor or the village parson, or something more practical than either; and Billy, finding himself the hero of this springtime gathering in Garth village, laughed vacantly. “Tell ye the answer to yond riddle in a brace of shakes, farmers all. Easy as tumbling off a wall; but ye wise folk look downwards when ye see a stone fence, and wonder how ye’ll light. Shameful poor thing to wonder how you’re going to fall off a wall. Never did think o’ the matter myself. Just climbs up, and drops soft-like down, does Billy, and finds himself on t’ other side somehow.” “Ay, ye’re plump enough to fall soft, Billy,” laughed a red-cheeked farmer. It was curious to see his brethren check the unruly speaker with nods and murmurs; they were men, for the most part, who had seen the frosts of April come to nip the April buds, and therefore they were superstitious. It boded ill to laugh at Billy the Fool when he wore the look he did just now, for to them all naturals were “wise.” “Tell us, Billy,” said a grey old man coaxingly, as if he held a baby in his arms. “Well, now, I will, seeing ye put it that way.” The natural’s placid smile roved from one to another of the group. “Could tell ye in a twinkling, farmer-folk, if I were minded to.” “Tuts, thou’rt minded to,” said the grey old man, coaxing still. “Ye can tell us how the weather sits, and where the first nest goes a-building--surely ye can tell us what’s the matter with Garth village?” “Ay, I could tell ye,” said Billy the Fool, his slow smile spreading like quiet sunshine on them all. “’Tis Reuben Gaunt ails Garth. Don’t need the likes o’ he, misters; he’s, as ye might say, a cuckoo in the wrong nest.” The men looked at one another. Billy the interpreter had put into words for them a vague unrest that had been with them during these past weeks. It was not that they bore Gaunt of Marshlands ill will; they were too forthright and too clean of habit to harbour malice. It was rather that they all felt as if the grey village was itself no longer; they had remembered Gaunt’s record before he left them, and the peace that followed his long wanderings abroad. And now, at a word from Billy, they understood these matters. “Hadn’t ye thought of it afore?” asked Billy, his lazy eyes as full of laughter as a moorland pool when April breezes sport across it. “Knew it myself the first day I clapped een on Reuben Gaunt Te-he! Ye’re fearful wise and terrible hard in the head-piece, misters, but ’tis soft Billy has to guide ye time and time.” “We’ll give you credit for it too,” muttered the grey old man.