“Never had money myself--not to speak of,” he said, with a tranquil chuckle. “Spoils folk’s lives and bothers ’em, does money, so I’ve heard tell. Cannot lie under a hedgerow on June nights and hear the birds a-twittering them to sleep. Must be prisoned in a great big bed, must folks wi’ money, and have a great big roof sitting down on them. Not for Billy the Fool, thank ye, that sort o’ smothered life! But there’s summat else, misters. Ye who’ve got money, like, might do a service to Garth village.” “Ay, and how, if a body might ask?” said a kindly farmer. “Well now, ye might take your shovels and a big sack, each of ye, and ye might spade your money into ’t sack.” A friendly smile passed from one to another of the farmers. Billy the Dreamer had stepped in front of Billy the Wise Fool, and they waited for a jest. There was a fine, free suggestion of untold wealth about the lad’s talk of a shovel and a sack that appealed to their humour. For they had tended, all of them, the niggard fields. “Then ye’d bring your sacks o’ gold,” went on the natural--his face was so solemn and so sly that none could guess whether or not he knew that he was jesting--“and ye’d pour your gold out right along the roadway here, and Reuben Gaunt would never see that the daffy-down-dillies were fuller of sunshine than the gold that strewed Garth Street.” “To be sure he wouldn’t,” said the grey old man. His tone suggested the quietness of a man who sees a moorland trout spreading dark fins in a pool, and moves warily to tickle him out on to the bank. “Ye see,” went on Billy, with his inscrutable, large air, “ye see, ye might put it to him this way. ‘Reuben Gaunt,’ ye’d say--or ‘Mister Reuben Gaunt,’ seeing he owns land--‘silly boy Gaunt,’ ye’d say, ‘just look ye at all this shovelled gold that lines Garth Street.’ And he’d answer, ‘What o’ that?’ And ye’d answer back, ‘Silly boy Gaunt,’ ye’d say, ‘there’s a line of gold from here to Elm Tree Inn. ’Tis yours for asking,’ ye’d say, ‘granted ye do one thing. Oh, ay, ’tis yours for sure, granted ye do one thing.’” “And what’s that one thing, Billy?” rapped out the grey-haired farmer. “Why, that he’d quit Garth and take the gold along with him. Never would miss gold and Reuben Gaunt myself. What say ye, misters? Billy the Fool’s a child, but somehow, as a chap might say, his head is screwed on right foremost way. Give him your gold, say I, and shift him out o’ Garth.” A great laugh went up. These farmers, not greedy of money by nature, but fond of it, as most north-born people are, saw the slow humour of that trail of gold which ended at the Elm Tree Inn. “And what when Reuben Gaunt had quitted, Billy?” asked one. Billy the Fool took out a black and antique pipe before replying. There were half-a-dozen pouches waiting for him on the instant, and he filled from the first offered--Priscilla’s father’s, as it chanced--and borrowed a match. Billy was always borrowing from his neighbours, and thrived on it.