“Well, look ye here, neighbour-folk,” he said, puffing long trails of smoke into the sunlit quiet of Garth. “I reckon there’d be ease of heart, and spring a-coming in, when Reuben Gaunt had left us. Don’t know myself, misters, but that’s what Billy the Fool has to say to ye wise folk.” They left him by and by, one or two of them patting him affectionately on the shoulder, and went down the street in twos and threes. It chanced to be market-day in Shepston, as any dweller on the fells could have told, seeing so many farmers in Garth Street at this hour of a busy springtime morning. “Slow and wise is Billy,” said one to the other as they walked between the limestone wall on one hand, the budding hedgerow on the other. “Ay, knows a lot. Only lacks the trick o’ letting out all he knows, or we’d be wiser, Daniel, us folk in Garth.” Billy meanwhile leaned placidly against the grindstone which stood at the road-edge just this side of Widow Lister’s cottage. The grindstone had been out of work these many years, and the lichens gave it a mellow dignity such as sits on old men after their labour is done, and well done, and the resting-time has come. Perhaps, if you had asked the lovers of Garth village to name their friendliest landmark, they would have said at once, “Why, th’ old grindstone. Have leaned against it many a time, and talked right good sense the while on summer’s evenings.” Billy was not talking now. One could not have said whether he were thinking even, so imperturbably he watched the smoke from his pipe curl up into the blue and tranquil air. Yet, just as he had been the interpreter of Garth’s unrest not long ago, he was the interpreter of spring just now. Like some primeval dweller in the green forests of a younger world, Billy the Fool looked out at nature, and watched the seasons pass him, and knew that weather and fresh air were relatives of his. They pitied him in Garth, as having no kin; but Billy, had he found words at any time in which to speak of it, could have told them, with that sudden, easy laugh of his, that he had a mother and sister-folk and brothers. “Might as well be wending down-street way,” he said at last, shaking himself as he stood upright and knocking out the ashes from his pipe. “Terrible lad to smoke is Billy, and I feel the need of another pipeful, as a chap might say. Will go and sit on the seat, under the old elm tree, and happen a body’s body might come along and offer me a fill.” The big tree in the roadway, fronting the inn to which it gave its name, was browning fast, in token of green leaves to come. The wide circle of the street here, where three roads met, was shimmering in the sunshine as if new-washed and wholesome. “Terrible fond of a seat is this plump lad,” murmured Billy, sinking carefully into the oaken bench that circled the great elm.