David the Smith, meanwhile, had gone down the lane. He could never wed Priscilla now--for Yea and Nay seemed always absolute to him--but at least he had concealed his heart-sickness from Yeoman Hirst. So do the younger men think always, not understanding that with age there comes a clearer understanding of the passions which greybeards view as onlookers. David was of the men who snatch their courage from the thick of despair, ride out with it, and count it the more precious because it is riddled through and through, like a banner well baptized by fire. So he held his head high, and swung staunchly down the lane. Three usual folk he met as he came into Garth Street and crossed to his smithy. They noted nothing out of the common in his cheery greeting; but Billy, rousing himself from sleep beside the smithy fire, knew by instinct what his comrade’s humour was. “You’re terrible gloomy, David the Smith,” he said, as he stretched his idle shoulders. “What’s amiss with us all, now spring’s come into Garth?” “Life,” snapped David, and picked up his tools, abandoned for Priscilla’s sake. “Just life, Fool Billy, and I’d no real quarrel with life, that I know of, before to-day.” “Comes of being wise,” said the other tranquilly. “Try being a Fool Billy--just try it, David, and lie in a hedge-bottom when ’tis seasonable, and hear the chirrup o’ the throstle. Begins to try his whistle, does throstle-boy, before the dawn comes rightly in.” David fingered his tools. They steadied him at all times, and his patient love for them was returned in full, at this moment of his direst sorrow. He felt his heart grow lighter--less heavy, rather--as he handled them. “Humming a tune, are you?” said Billy presently, with an approving nod. “Terrible fool’s trick, that, and comforting. Shows ye’re getting upsides wi’ yourself, as a body might say.” “Getting upsides with myself?” growled David the Smith. “Have got to do, or what’s the use o’ life?” CHAPTER VI Rumour was not less busy in Garth than elsewhere where folk congregate, and Reuben Gaunt gave food for it these days. His rules of conduct, or the lack of them, were a constant puzzle; his wish to play the gentleman, when by rights he should have been a yeoman, and proud of the same, perplexed them; moreover, he could be brave and generous on occasion, and this fitted ill with their notions of a scamp. Ne’er-do-wells, pure and simple, they could understand. There were two or three of the breed in Garth, but these consistently were idle at the best, and in dire mischief at the worst. Gaunt was a puzzle to them, and therefore a whetstone for their tongues. Then, too, he was fond of horses, and master of them; fond of dogs, and knowledgeable as regards their ways; and these were qualities that Garth village liked to see in any man.