She heard no rumour, would have disdained rumour had she heard it. Clean of thought and heart, Priscilla wondered if she loved Reuben Gaunt just well enough to marry him. She never questioned his good faith. It was hers to say no or yes--spoiled little queen of the little village as she was--and she asked herself, over and over again, with Puritan self-question, if this light of the glamoured lands were not a will-o’-the-wisp such as danced across the upland marshes. When she saw David, and spoke with him, it was sure that marshlights flickered about her fancied love for Gaunt. Then Reuben would come, soft of speech and pliable, and David would seem a big and country lad upon the sudden. Spring, meanwhile, flushed into splendour round about the gardens of Garth Street, and in the woods, and along the length of mossy lane-banks. A foam of green-stuff feathered the larches and the rowans, the dog-rose bushes and the blackthorns. The low, sequestered dingle hiding Eller Beck was banked so thick with primroses on either side that it seemed a thousand golden eyes looked up, winking the dew away, when farm-folk went through the dene at blithe of the dawning-time. The weather held, with playful showers that were like a child’s tears, gusty and soon over. Seldom in the memory of Garth had the pomp and circumstance of the young summer proceeded with so few mischances. There had been no sudden snow to hinder the lambs new-dropped about the pastures; there had been no frost o’ nights; and the throstles sang their clarion note as if no winter’s wind had ever piped a harsher tune about the grey fell-village. At eight of one of these spring mornings--the wind light from the south, and the sun playing bo-peep with fleecy clouds--Priscilla of the Good Intent stood waiting under the elm tree which long ago had given its name to the village inn. She had been fitful lately in her temper, and Yeoman Hirst, thinking a day’s holiday would be “good for the lile lass,” had asked her to carry out some farming business for him at Keta’s Well, high up the valley. So Cilla waited, a trim and slender figure, near the old elm tree. The public vehicle by which the Dales folk went from Shepston to Keta’s Well--a vehicle half coach, half omnibus--halted here to take up passengers. The coach was overdue, as it happened, and while she waited, Priscilla saw Reuben Gaunt ride down the street. Reuben saw her, too, but pretended that his mare was fidgeting upon the rein. He pulled her sharply back at the entry to the stable-yard, plucked her forward again, and disappeared. “He does not see me,” murmured Priscilla of the Good Intent. “Light to come and light to go, is Reuben Gaunt, they say--but surely--” Gaunt had found the ostler in the inn-yard. “Dick,” he said, “has the coach gone by?” “Not yet, sir. She’s late this morning, like, and that’s rare for Will the Driver.”