“I walked up the fields this morning,” she said, with hesitation now. “Ay, I know! What did ye find there? Not one to shift round like a windle-straw, ye.” “What I found is not for you to ask, or me to tell, father,” she answered, meeting his glance again. “I can tell you this much--that the gloaming and the moon between them were overstrong for me last night, and the morning’s sunlight cured me of my fairy-madness.” “Cured altogether, lile Cilla?” asked the farmer, after a silence and a shrewd, long look at her. “Cured altogether--yes,” she answered gravely. “That’s good hearing. To tell the truth--and I’m no way hurting ye by saying it now--if Garth Valley were islanded by water, and ye and me and Gaunt were stranded on it--as folk _are_ stranded time and time in those outlandish, heathen parts that David is going to, or says he is--why, me and ye, lile lass, would keep to one quarter o’ the dry land, and I’d ram my fist into Gaunt’s face if he came spying over to our end o’ the safe, high country. Couldn’t bide him, I, if there weren’t another man to talk to in the land.” Priscilla scarcely heard him. Her glamour-tide was over, or seemed to be; David was unrepentant of his forthrightness, and would not see how she was hungering for the word, or the look, or the touch which only he could give. “Come here to my knee, lass,” said Hirst by and by. She knelt on the patch-work rug, and put her hands on his knee and rested her head on them, looking into the fireless grate. So she had knelt in childhood’s days--and afterwards at rare intervals when she and Yeoman Hirst were moved to special tenderness. “I won’t deny my pride’s had a fall, and a steepish one,” he went on, thinking that his touch upon her hair was gentle. “So has mine, father; but life must go on, pride in one’s way or not.” “Art going to be a lile wise-woman before thy time? Ay, pride tumbles and gets muckied, and ye’ve to clean it up again wi’ patience, as ye clean harness gear. Still, I’m sticking to my pride, Cilla, till they coffin me up, and so are ye; the Hirsts all do, by nature.” They said nothing for awhile, but between them was the speech of trust and understanding. “Cilla, lass?” said the yeoman presently. “Yes, daddy?” “Wish I knew more about this daft business. Wish ye could tell me, like, just what ye saw up yond green pasture-lands to-day.” “I wish so, too,” she answered simply; “but I cannot tell you, father.” John Hirst took a pull at his ale--the first one. “D’ye know what I’ve been thinking, Cilla?” he said, wiping the froth away from his lips with a kerchief patterned all in blue and white. “Nay, I could not guess.” “That, if it came to a tussle ’twixt ye and me, I’d fare hard. Ye’re so slim to look at, and I could lift ye wi’ one hand and think naught on’t--but your will is made out of a piece o’ hickory wood, I do believe. Like ye the better for ’t, I--though ye mustn’t let yourself hear me say as much.”