“Put the nag in the stable, Dick, and look well after her. I had forgotten that the coach went up this hour to Keta’s Well. Better drive than ride, eh, when there’s a long way to travel?” “Well, that’s true. Better be carried than suit your knee-grip to a horse’s whimsies,” laughed the other, turning his straw from the left to the right side of his mouth. Reuben strolled out into the highway. Not slow at any time, he had guessed, seeing Priscilla standing under the old elm with a basket in her hands, that she was waiting for the coach; and, though awhile since he had been sure that he meant to ride to a pigeon-match three miles away, he was certain now that he must go to Keta’s Well. “Good day, Priscilla,” he said, with quiet surprise. “Good day,” she answered, the wild-rose coming to her cheeks. “You did not see me, Mr. Gaunt, when you rode into the inn-yard.” The ready lie came to Reuben’s tongue. Like water slipping down between the ferny streamways of the hills, he sought only the quiet pools--sought them at any hazard of the rocks that met his course. “I feared I had lost the coach, Priscilla, and was riding hard to catch it.” The wild-rose crimsoned into June in Cilla’s face. “Are you going, too, to Keta’s Well?” she asked. “I’ve business there. And you?” “I’ve business, too. Father is busy in the fields, and has asked me to do some bargaining for him up yonder.” “You’re too bonnie and slim-to-see for bargaining, Cilla,” said Reuben. “Am I?” she laughed, with frank disdain of flattery. “I can bargain well, Mr. Gaunt, when needs must. Ask father.” The irony of life rose up and laughed at her, in the midst of this hearty springtime weather. If ever she had needed a hard heart and a clear knowledge of what barter meant, she needed them now. She had a great gift to bestow, or to withhold--the gift which lies in the hand of every woman once in a lifetime--and yet the spring, and Gaunt’s whimsical, gay air, bewildered all her judgment. “You always flout me nowadays, Cilla,” he said. Gaunt was strangely like the dogs he loved so well. Careless of the past, careless of the future, he longed always for the instant pleasure, and, if he were thwarted, assumed a helpless face of innocence. It seemed that the sense of guilt was left out of him at birth; thwartings by the way surprised him, when another man would have admitted that he got no more than his deserts. Priscilla of the Good Intent, also, was strangely like herself this morning. She remembered that her father, and all the men-folk of Garth, were hard on Reuben. She looked at his devil-may-care and pleading face, and decided impulsively that they were wrong. “I do not flout you willingly,” she answered, her candid eyes looking straight into Reuben’s own. “They are not fair to you in Garth here, and I am sorry.” Across their talk came the patter of horse-hoofs, and the coach swung merrily round the corner and stopped with a flourish at the inn-door.