The gate of the croft was opened quietly, and Billy the Fool sauntered idly towards them. The natural gave no hint, in look or bearing, of the woful trouble he had caused himself and Cilla up yonder on the brink of the wooded hollow. “Now, good day, misters all!” was his greeting, as he slouched up, his hands thrust listlessly into the pockets of his ancient trousers. “’Tis what Billy the Fool would call a fine evening for the time o’ year; and yet there’s somewhat cold, and wet, and sharp, blowing up from Easterby Hill.” “Tuts!” said Yeoman Hirst. “Ye’re as wise as a fox when it’s scenting a hen-house, Billy; but this weather is nailed to the sky, I tell ye, and won’t shift for a brace o’ weeks.” “Te-he,” answered Billy amicably. “I’m just telling ye what I think myself--what I smell i’ my nostrils, like--but I was never one to guess what my betters were thinking. Now, masters. I’ve been wondering.” “Tell us, then,” said Hirst. It was odd that he and David--the two most good-humoured men in Garth--had lost their tempers utterly to-night, and that it needed Billy’s advent to show them the droll side of life again. “I’m wondering if there is a fill o’ baccy among the four o’ ye--and maybe a match to kindle a light with. Have been in terrible lonesome parts all day, and nigh forgotten what a pipeful tastes like.” The sun was getting down toward Sharprise Hill now, and the smoke of Billy’s pipe rose so that the slanting sunbeams caught it tranquilly, and the gnats, playing in this warmth of spring new-found after the long winter, drifted away in cloudy streams from a scent which they abhorred. “Ye look terrible low in spirits, all of ye,” said Billy, after he was sure that his pipe was drawing well. “I fancied, when I came by just now, I’d never seen four men sitting on a fence and looking so empty, like, of what they lacked.” He had not seemed to look at them until he neared the fence; yet twenty yards away he had known what their mood was. “Did ye ever handle wire-netting, Billy?” asked Hirst. “Nay, not that I can call to mind.” “Well, go up to yond turkey-pen, and see the way the netting runs into the hillock, choose what a body does with it; and, if ye can tell us wise folk how to set the durned thing straight, there’s another fill o’ baccy for you, Billy, and a fill of ale, and another match to light your pipe with.” Billy strolled up to the pen--the rents in his breeches showed the brown flesh through--and seemed not to look at it at all. Then he came back. “Misters, might a Fool Billy say somewhat to wise folk?” he asked. “Say on, Billy, lad! Say on.” “Well, now, if Fool Billy were going to climb a hill, like, after what ye might call a stretch o’ level walking, he’d sit him down first, would Billy, at th’ hill-foot, and think a deal about it.” “Ay, warrant he would!” chuckled David.