The springs had burst, and the wilderness was traversed with a thousand glittering rillets. In the deep coombs and wherever a green dimple broke the stony slopes of the hills, water now leapt and glittered. Traced to their sources, the springs might be found beginning in little bubbling cauldrons, from which, through a mist of dancing sand, they rose out of the secret heart of the granite. Then, by winding ways, they fell, and the green grass marked their unfamiliar passing with beads of imprisoned light on every blade. It was the death-time of heath and furze, the springtime of moss, lichen and fungus. Quaint fleshy caps and hoods--some white and grey, some amber and orange-tawny--spattered the heath; and many mosses fell lustrously in sheets and shone in pads and cushions. The great lycopodium spread green fingers through the herbage, and his little lemon spires of fruit thrust upward in companies and groups. Beside him the eye-bright still blossomed; the whortle's foliage turned to scarlet; and in the marsh the bog mosses made splendid mosaic of delicate and tender colours. At river's brink the seed-cases of the asphodel burnt, like a scarlet flame; the sky-coloured bells of the least campanula still defied death; and the later gentian grew and lifted purple blossoms from the glimmering grass. Daniel Brendon crossed Lyd by the stepping-stones and met with Jarratt Weekes. They walked along together, and the elder man happened to speak of a matter then in the other's thoughts. "I suppose you know Mr. Woodrow's going at last? My wife says she can't live with her father no more, and she's right; so I've had to say that I must have the cottage empty after Christmas. What's he going to do?" "Can't tell you," answered the other. "There's a general opinion that he's not strong and didn't ought to spend his winters up here." "I reckon we shouldn't have heard about his health if he'd been a poor man. He's well enough to do everything he wants to do. Have 'e marked that?" Daniel nodded. "All the same, we mustn't judge people by their looks," he said. "I was thinking much as you do only an hour agone--and saying it too. But I got a pretty sharp rap over the knuckles from Prout for my pains. Ban't our business, after all. He's a very good master--never heard of a better." "And a very good payer. I've nothing to grumble at. Only a man's wife must be his first thought. Mrs. Weekes wants to go into the house." "Us married ones can afford to laugh at the bachelors," declared Daniel. "So us can--though the bachelors have been known to pay back the compliment sometimes, and make us a laughing-stock. When I was married, kind-hearted people whispered 'twas the rasp wedding with the nutmeg-grater. That's the sort of gentlemanly thing one's friends say behind one's back. But I think it has been proved different. My wife's a wonder in her way--got all my mother's sense without her tongue."