“Haven’t a fill o’ baccy on ye, David?” “Ay, lad--three, if ye’ll take them.” “Nay, I’m only wanting one,” said the other, briskly filling his pipe. “And a match, as a body’s body might say.” He lit his pipe, nodded tranquilly at David, then went up the fields. David watched his unhurried stride, the unhurried trail of smoke that drifted in his wake. “A born smoker, is the lad. Puffs none too fast and none too slow, but fair as if he had ’twixt this and Judgment to finish a pipeful in. No wonder Billy needs only a match at a time; yond pipeful will burn its way till there isn’t a strand o’ baccy left in ’t.” In some dim way, David Blake was awakening nowadays from that bluntness and reserve which, even toward himself, it had been his habit to maintain. In part he was vastly diffident, and in part his days were filled with earnest labour, so that all his life he had feared to indulge in what he named “fancy feelings.” Yet to-night, as he saw the utter content of Billy the Fool, he was moved to a speculation which, before the spring came in, he would have counted dreaminess. “Will die a lad, yond Fool Billy,” he muttered, as the summing up of all his thoughts. “He’s the only man of his age in Garth that’s what ye might call rightly happy. Has no worries, he, and can make a wise fool like myself see ladhood pictured all afresh in a clutch of blackbird eggs. Would swop places with Billy, I rather fancy, if the chance were gi’en me.” He gave a last look at the evening hills, the evening fields, behind him; and for the first time he wondered if Priscilla’s refusal of his suit were final. Greatly brave in speculation was David to-night, and the mere hope that Cilla might find second thoughts--a hope slender as a reed, but real for all that--set a new light in his eyes and a brisker movement in his feet as he stepped out toward Good Intent. He went on the high ground overlooking Willow Beck, and as he walked he kept looking constantly into the valley. So gently the gloaming filtered down the valley’s length like a wide stream of silver-grey--so prayerful and so still the evening was--that a man of harder heart than David might well have found his eyes go seeking peace and finding it. “She’s bonnie, when all’s said, is Garth Valley,” was his thought; “and here am I, all late for Farmer Hirst.” Suddenly he halted, though wishing to get forward. Through the silver-grey of Garth Valley two figures came; as yet they were no more than outlined against the grey, but David was held by some unhappy intuition, and he needs must stay and watch them at a nearer distance. Slow, but pitiably sure for David, their progress was; and soon, though it was too far to know their faces, he knew them by their carriage and their walk. Spring was over in a moment for David, but boyhood was not altogether past, it seemed, for he felt his throat grow big, and his eyes were smarting.