It was easy, seeing the farm to-day, with the mellow spring light dwarfed and sundered by its blackened walls--it was easy to understand the gospel in which Widow Mathewson and her daughter had been reared. It was chary of spring, this farm; it had received more kicks than halfpence from the weather; it looked askance at gifts o’ grace, and would not listen to the larks on this blithe morning. Peggy had just finished churning, when she heard the sound of horse-hoofs. She stood and listened, and there was expectation in every line of her strong figure--and in her face a wild self-pity and derision. “So you’ve come?” was her greeting, as Gaunt stepped inside the dairy, after slipping the cob’s bridle about the top bar of the outer gate. “Knew you would, soon or late--but ’tis full soon, Reuben, seeing that only last night--” “I want us to part friends. That’s why I’m here,” broke in the other, tapping his riding-breeches restlessly with his crop. The girl laughed. Gaunt had never heard disaster so assured in any voice. It was as if the farmstead, and the weather it had seen, and the tumults that had scarred its walls, took human shape and utterance. “That’s how ye want us to part?” she said. “Will ye be a fool to the end, Reuben Gaunt, or are ye thinking life’s a game for bairns to sport with? Ride back through the ling to lile Miss Good Intent, and tell her I’ve returned ye with all the will in the world. Tell her that lasses catch ye, like the plague, and lose what little looks they’ve got through fretting for your tom-fool ways. Tell her--” She broke down suddenly, for the strain of the past night, of the day’s labour at the churn, had told on her. She had no tears left; but her eyes were full of a soft mist, such as a warm gloaming draws from Garth Valley in the spring. Peggy was beautiful to-day; her tragedy was that of the ages, but her pathos was her own, single and direct in its appeal. The cool, whitewashed dairy framed her; the warm, rich smell of milk and butter was about her. “Peggy,” said Reuben Gaunt, “God knows ’tis hard to part from ye.” “Ay, and God knows that Peggy Mathewson knows your lies--knows them within and without--as she knows her own face--her face, Reuben, that was bonnie enough to catch ye, but not bonnie enough to hold ye afterwards. See ye, lad, ye’re bent on killing me one way or another. Why not take some handy stave and do it now? Better soon than late, Reuben, if a body’s got to die.” “I’m marrying Priscilla of the Good Intent,” said Gaunt doggedly. “Oh, I know so much since yestere’en. D’ye think to give her happiness, Reuben? I could never tell, myself, what was in your mind, or out of it, at any moment.” “Come for a walk in the fields, Peggy,” he said, after a restless silence.