Garth folk, when they are compelled to be far away from home, remember always how the curlews fret and cry about the fells. The sob in the bird’s call--the sadness that begins so quietly, and afterwards goes shuddering out across the gloaming’s stillness--they are the interpreters of music, sad enough, but understood and loved. In the daytime, complaining of the sheep; near dusk, the curlew’s melancholy; folk who have known and heard these things will lie o’ nights amid the welter of the tropics, and call the clear sounds back to mind. Reuben Gaunt, random as he was, had done the same, and Cilla’s earnestness came home to him to-night. “They’re sad birds, though, when all is said,” he answered. “Sad? Ay, and so is life, or was meant to be, if we could only see it so.” Priscilla--whether the curlews had caused her this dismay, or not--felt restless, ill at ease, as if the light of some great truth were coming to her, and her eyes were unprepared for it. “Now, listen, lile lass!” said Gaunt. He was helping her to cross a strip of marshy field, and his grasp tightened on her arm. “Suppose life was meant just otherwise? Suppose there was love of a man for a maid, and the lark singing up to the sun?” The candour in her eyes bewildered Reuben for a moment, as she freed herself and sprang lightly to the drier ground, and stood facing him, her hands clasped in front of her. “Yes, if it _were_ love, Reuben.” She was no longer proud, or self-secure. It was rather as if she reached out in search of guidance, feeling the throb of new, quick impulses, as if she asked Gaunt to tell her, out of his riper wisdom, whether it were good or ill to follow these same impulses. There was flattery in this to Reuben. He felt big, protective, and again he yielded to a half-truth--that Cilla had shown him the good way of love. “Lile lass,” he said--and Garth Valley knows no softer endearment than those words--“lile lass, must I be asking you again and again to marry me? Cilla, I love you, and I could house you well.” She thrust her clasped hands outward, as if to ward off an evil thought. “What does the house matter, Reuben?” she said, with another gust of that passion which few suspected in Cilla of the Good Intent. “D’ye think I would wed for house and gear? I’m asking, Reuben, whether love is going to sit on the hearthstone and keep it warm--if love is going to sit at meat with us--” “Try, and see, Cilla,” he broke in quietly.