“Why, I must be getting past my memory, David! A bonnie lass she was, and spirited. I remember looking her way as a lad, till Cilla’s mother put all such fool’s nonsense out of my head for good and all! She was over-good for Joshua West, all the same. Bird of a feather, he, with Reuben Gaunt--settled to naught, liked spending money better than the earning of it; wanted to be pretty-boy-rover over all the countryside.” David was silent for awhile. Mention of Gaunt brought sharply to him the remembrance of what he had seen to-night, when looking down from the higher fields on the grey of the valley’s gloaming. He wanted to warn Cilla’s father, as he had wanted to warn the girl herself; but, for the like reason, he held his peace; for Gaunt was his rival, and David was sensitive almost to absurdity when honour was in case. “Ay,” he answered at last. “He was feather-bird to Gaunt. Lost his money and his lands, Farmer, ye remember, and went overseas to see if he could frame better, like? Framed well, too, as it proved.” “They sometimes do. I remember you told me, years ago, that he was farming to some purpose at last, and was earning gear and gold.” “Puzzles me, too, why that should be. Is’t that Joshua West’s sort o’ breed cannot rightly stand against Garth weather, with its ups and downs, and its east wind in May, and its heartsome, daft contrariness? Or is it that there’s fewer wayside drinks to be had in foreign parts?” “Bit o’ both, I reckon. Well, then, he’s dead, by what the letter says.” “Ay. Slipped under a timber-waggon, he--Joshua was always fond o’ slipping one way or another--and they picked him up with his back cut in two. My Aunt Joanna has not favoured me overmuch with letters, but she’s in trouble now. Life’s always playing that queer game with me, Farmer; when folk are up and about, damned if they care a stiver for David the Smith--but when they’re down, ’tis always I’m their best friend, and must hurry off at once.” “Up or down, folk look to ye, David,” said the other, with unabashed and honest praise. “Ye’re a bit like Sharprise Hill, ye--Garth folk _will_ turn for a look at ye, come evil times or good, before they step indoors o’ night. So Joanna West, having no sons of her own, is lonely over yonder, now her good man’s gone, and she wants ye to go out and set things straight?” “That’s about it. Yet Garth Village is good enough for me, and always was. What make of moonshine would it be to go marlaking in overseas parts?” “Now, I’m thinking,” said Hirst slowly. “We’re talking no secrets, David, when I tell ye that ye want my Cilla, and that I want ye to have the lass, though I can ill spare her. Well, now, maids are pranksome.” “Maybe,” assented David, his face ruddier than its wont. “No news that, Farmer. Perhaps, in a littlish way, ye’d let me ask what bearing the matter has on Aunt Jane?”