“Seems power to guide myself was left out of me,” he answered sharply. “Listen to me, Peggy! I’ve nothing much behind me to boast of--but I love Hirst’s lile lass.” “Ay, so ye said,” put in the other drily. “It scarce helps me, Reuben, to hear it twice. For there’s my own life, as it happens, as well as yours to reckon with.” Gaunt felt like a man whose feet are caught by the bog. The clean, dry land was near to him; but his feet were chained, and it was hard to pluck them out. As for Peggy, she was ready to drift into any mood, and past days returned to her with sudden clearness. “Do ye mind the day we went to Linsall Fair? ’Twas years ago, Reuben, but I mind it still. You bought a ring off a pedlar, and you set it on my finger. Lord, how it all comes back!” she broke off, looking softly at him, so that her likeness to her mother was altogether lost. “There was a young moon over the fell-top, and folk were dancing on the green; and you put the ring on my finger, and my heart went all soft and shameless. Reuben, you told me--” “Told you we were wedded; and we laughed. Ay, I remember, Peggy!” And so they fell to quiet talk of bygone times. Peggy wondered at her weakness, and Gaunt could not fathom the meaning of his newly-wakened liking to be with this lass when he should have been at Good Intent. It was then that Billy the Fool guided Cilla to the thorn-bush where the mother-blackbird sat upon her nest; but neither Gaunt nor Peggy saw the stricken face that watched them for a moment between the twigs, then disappeared. “Fine-weather days don’t last, somehow,” went on the girl. “We thought the world held no two folk, Reuben, save ye and me? Well, we were fools for our pains.” “They’re good to look back on now and then, all the same, those days.” “Oh, where’s the use in your looking back? You feel no warmer in winter-time by thinking of last summer’s heat. _Good to look back on?_ ’Tis easy for ye to talk, Reuben!” Gaunt got to his feet, and helped her up. “Time we were moving, Peggy,” he said curtly--for he was fearing the girl’s despair and tenderness. “Yond horse of mine will be tearing the reins to bits, for I’ve kept him longer tied to a gate-post than he ever was before.” “So ’tis good-by?” she said, moving beside him up the stream. “Ay, for it must be. Bygones are bygones, Peggy.” “True--if ye let ’em be. Never fear, Reuben! I’m as proud as Miss Good Intent, or maybe more so, and I’ll not trouble ye. Begin with your good life, lad, and see if ye can carry it! And for all reward I’ll ask to see Miss Priscilla’s face when a year’s gone by and the first bairn has come.”