Reuben winced. None in Garth would have given him credit for it; but, weak of purpose as he was, his love for Cilla touched clean, wholesome thoughts that had been stifled long ago. He resented Peggy’s easy speech touching his marriage and what might, or might not, come afterwards. The girl knew what was passing in his mind, and laughed--not carelessly, but with the sadness that was rooted deep in all her moods. “Sorry to hurt ye, Reuben,” she said. “You’re a delicate sort o’ plant, and need a wall ’twixt ye and the wind.” They were silent until Intake Farm was well in sight. Peggy halted in the dip of the fields where the ragged thorn-trees grew. She looked long and hard at Gaunt, and again there was a strange beauty in her face. “Was going to ask ye for a last kiss, but I’m past that, Reuben. Lad, I wonder will ye ever know the kisses we might have had! I think ye’ll waken sometimes in the night, and hunger for what’s past your getting any longer. Fratch as we may, we were made each for the other, if your een were open wide enough to see it.” “Peggy, lass,” he began, moving nearer to her. “Nay, Reuben! Over and done with, like a last year’s nest. Yond’s your way; I’m going wide into the moor, to cool a touch of some daft fever that’s come over me.” Irresolute, and glancing backward often, Reuben went up toward Ghyll Farm. Life, that had seemed so plain last night upon the Garth highroad, was tangled now. The fierce, low passion of the girl--her certainty of heart-break, with little complaining--a shrewd guess that she was right in saying he would wake at night and think of her--these were out of keeping with the primrose lanes of yesterday. “’Tis hard to go straight,” said Gaunt at last, with a shrug of his shoulders, as he reached the paddock of Ghyll Farm. No horse was tethered to the gate; but over the top bar leaned Widow Mathewson, her brown arms naked to the sunlight and a look of grim derision on her face. “Seeking a horse, Mr. Gaunt?” she asked, with studied courtesy. “Yes, I tethered him to the gate here.” “Oh, ’twill be the one I loosened an hour or so agone. Found him here, when I came from driving sheep across the moorland; and I hadn’t a use for him myself.” “Thank you,” said Reuben, falling in with the widow’s own quiet tone. “Sensible thing, Mrs. Mathewson, to loose a cob whenever ye find him tied to a gate-post by the bridle.” “So I thought myself--and, by that token, I slipped the bridle from his mouth and laid it under the wall here. Will ye take it with ye, Mr. Gaunt, or shall Peggy bring it over to Marshlands? We’re simple, and ye’re reckoning to be one o’ the gentry-born nowadays; so I fancy ye’d think it ill demeaned ye, like, to go carrying a horse’s bridle in your hands.” Gaunt took the bridle, keeping his temper as best he could. Quiet or stormy, Widow Mathewson always cut like hail against his face. “Perhaps you’ll tell me where the cob went, the last you saw of him?”