Peggy herself, meanwhile, had carried her aching heart till she was sure of being out of sight. Then she stumbled to the nearest gate, and looked out at the grey, soft darkening of the hills. Sharprise was an ill-defined, blue-purple splash across the fell-scape now, and the curlew’s note waned softer and more soft. “’Twas to be,” murmured Peggy. “Oh, ay, ’twas like as it was to be. The queer thing is, that I bear no malice to slim Miss Good Intent. Should hate her, I--yet, if ’twere not she, ’twould be another.” She spoke as if half stunned; for, though her judgment had foreseen such trouble long ago, her heart had covered up its doubts. She, too, heard the wailing farewell of the curlews to the twilight; but it reminded her only of sad weather on the moor--of wet east winds, with snow behind them, just when the lambing season seemed like to prosper--of frosty labour in the fields of barren harvests. “He’ll break my life in two. Tried hard to, once, did Reuben Gaunt; and now he’s home-returned to finish off the brave job, ’twould seem.” She gathered the remnants of her courage together. With a pitiful defiance she laughed, though a sob broke half-way through the laugh. “Kept my pride to the end. Told Miss Good Intent I went to meet my lad. Oh, I know Reuben! He’ll think of that in a while, and grow jealous.--Pity o’ life!” she broke off, straightening herself with sudden passion and flinging out her capable, strong arms with a gesture that was tragic in its impotence. “Women keep crying, crying out to God--if there is one--and asking why men were sent into the world for mischief. And no answer comes, not if you mucky your knees with going down in the peat to pray for ’t. And women go on saying there’s no such thing as heart-break; and men believe ’em, because they daren’t do otherwise; and graves keep being dug, and good lives shovelled under ’em, with a word or two from parson to smooth the sods down. Lord, I wish a few o’ the surpliced folk would come to Peggy Mathewson for guidance!” The last silence of the fells came down about the girl. Yet she stood there, not thinking much, but feeling more than weaker folk could have borne. So quiet it grew that the busy travels of the field mice could be heard, as they pattered through the grass, and the nestling of the lambs against their mother’s fleece was a call, almost, across the stillness of the night. “I knew all along, and I wouldn’t heed,” she whispered to the night. “I wouldn’t heed again, if all were to be done afresh. Yet what he’s missed! God, what the lad has missed!” CHAPTER VIII Priscilla had forgotten Peggy Mathewson soon after they had passed her by. She was thinking of Reuben, sauntering step by step beside her, and of the new elusive joy there was in these April gloaming-tides which she remembered from her childhood.