“Now, how’s that?” he asked, surprised into putting his hand on hers and drawing her into the roadway. “David make trouble for the lile lass? ’Twas not wont to be, Priscilla, before new times came in.” “It is this way, David. You ask too much, and I cannot make a friend of you.” “Seems a pity, lass, for a better friend you never had.” “Well, then, but wilt be just a friend, David? One I could come to, and ask for help?” David looked at her. The moon and the stars were tender with her face, and with her slim and upright body. Cilla had always been the one maid for him, but to-night there was magic in her eyes and in her touch. He remembered, suddenly and with hardship, how he had looked from the hilly fields not long ago, and had seen her in Gaunt’s arms. It was true that his temper was brittle nowadays--the temper of David the Smith, which Garth folk spoke of reverently as they spoke of steadfast summer weather--and he had been over-brave to-night. “Friendship be damned!” he said. “I’ll take more or less, Priscilla, and good night to you.” He was gone, and Priscilla of the Good Intent was left in the starlit road. And first she laughed, because she could not help it, hearing David break away from his quiet, Puritan mother tongue. And then she sighed, and wished him back again. And afterwards she glanced at Charley’s Wain, overlooking the trim farmstead, and wondered if she had a heart at all, or whether it had only gone astray. Certain it was that she had never liked David as she did to-night, had never seen the real man peep out so clearly. Still wanting help from him--help against herself, or against Gaunt, she knew not which--she had called to him before she could check the words. “David, come back!” she cried. But David was striding down Garth Street, and was blaming himself for the odd language he had used toward Priscilla. “Quiet of tongue, am I?” he muttered. “Why break out when the lile lass comes to bid good night to me? Nay, David, nay! Thou’rt a clumsy lad, when all’s said, and deserved to lose her.” Quiet and still was Garth village, as David walked down its moonlit length. The gentle noises of the day were gone; no voice passed gossip up and down the road, no footfall, save David’s, lifted the light April dust; the grey fronts of the houses seemed full of ripe and mellow thought, and from their gardens came a warm faint smell of flowers and green-stuff. Now that he was to leave it, the sense of home rushed in on David with new-found force. He had felt the more in times past, maybe, because he rarely found an outlet for his affections in words or ordered thoughts; and to-night he knew, keenly and with pain, how much he cared for Cilla, how much he cared for this grey street and the grey circling hills. “I’ve got to leave ye, Garth,” he muttered huskily. “Ay, that’s about the size of it.”