“Ah, that proves the matter. There’s other birds like ye, prettyish and small of build, that fly zig-zag to their nests.” Gaunt was nettled in earnest now. “As you want a plain tale, you shall have it,” he said quietly. “I’m going to marry John Hirst’s daughter.” Widow Mathewson knew no surprises nowadays; she had outlived them. “Guessed as much yesternight,” she said, speaking only half the truth for once, like Reuben himself. Yet it was only the name of her daughter’s rival that she had lacked. “Peggy went to bed with tears in her een, and in the middle of the night she wakened me with her sobbing in the next-door room. Queer that such as ye can keep such as Peggy wetting blankets with her tears; but I did the same in my time for as poor a dandy-tuft of a man as ye.” “We are good friends, seemingly,” said Gaunt impatiently. “Ay, close as bee and flower, Reuben Gaunt. Ride down to Peggy--she’s throng with churning--and tell her the same lies that I hearkened to when I was ripe and young. God plants the like garden for all women, I take it, with the like apples in it; and, whether the man be half a man or a tenth part, ’tis all one. Reuben Gaunt,” she broke off, with the passion she had denied not long ago, “why did ye keep your saddle just now when I frightened that horse of yours? There’s a sharp rock on either hand of ye, and two or three in front; whichever way your horse had thrown ye, ye’d not have lighted soft--and it might have been on your head.” “I learned young to keep the saddle, though I’m loth to disappoint you, Mrs. Mathewson,” said Gaunt, recovering his air of unconcern. “Should have been glad, I, to see ye with your head smashed in,” went on the other dispassionately; “glad, too, to think ’twas I that started your horse. But it was not like to be; for ye always had the luck. Luck doesn’t run in my family, and never did.” There was a silence between them, as they faced each other, the only human-folk in this lonely stretch of heath. In a place more busy, with others near at hand to temper the reality of what he saw in the woman’s face, of what he heard in her voice, Reuben Gaunt might have carried the matter off with more success; but they were alone with the rugged moor. He saw, during this time of silence, his past life stretching behind him like a miry, ill-found road. He knew himself dishonest, though he tried to find again his old, easy outlook upon life. A naked man, facing the naked truth, was Reuben Gaunt this once; and there was no Cilla here, sitting beside him as they travelled down the road to Garth and bringing to him thoughts of tranquil betterment. “I’ll be going up the moor,” he said at last, fumbling with the reins. “Ay, I would. Then turn to the right, and down to the right again--ye know your way to Peggy.”