and drank his nightcap of hot rum. 'I'd have felt less lonesomelike if Priscilla's mother wasn't lying green under sod, and me alone save for 'Cilla. But lasses must wed, and I've seen o' late the mating look in Priscilla's face. Well, her mother wore that look, once on a day, and I've seen no better in my long life, and never shall. It must be David-oh, ay, it must be David!'

So he left them together this morning, and his big voice seemed to echo up and down the grey, stone hills long after he had left.

Farmer Hirst had given the blacksmith many chances of this kind; and always it had been, as now, the signal for David to grow tongue-tied, for Priscilla to show the wild-rose flag of maidenly rebellion in her cheeks.

'Tis kindly, this smell of a mistal,' ventured David by and by. 'Sweet o' the kine, I call it 'tis so lusty and so big to smell.'

Priscilla answered nothing. There's something in the fragrance of a cattle-byre that makes for wooing, no man can tell you why; and the lass was young and was feeling two spring seasons meet in her-spring of her untried youth, and spring of the tried old world that knows its faith.

''Cilla, the throstles are singing out of doors,' said he, bending an ear toward the open fields.

His meaning should have been clear; for, when a throstle sings across the reek of an open mistal-door, the human oddities of speech should be altogether lost, and the world's tongue interpret all. Yet Priscilla missed it, and disdained the thrush's clarionnote.

Ay, David, and the world is turning round about the sun, and the stars come out o' nights, and I've to do my churning by and by. David, is there naught beyond your throstles and your stars and the sun that guides the world?'

'Naught,' answered David stolidly. They're life, Priscilla, and maybe when we're hid beneath the sward we'll know of bonnier things-but not just yet, I'm thinking.'

It was David's moment, had he known it. It needed a touch, a glance, a right word spoken that should ring in tune with the spring; and while he halted there came a sound of whistling all across the mistal-yard. It was not like Farmer Hirst to turn back when once he had set off, and Priscilla wondered whose the footstep could be the step that was quicker and lighter than her father's.

'One of the farm-men, maybe,' muttered David, remembering,

now that the opportunity was like to be lost, the one right speech he should have whispered into Priscilla's ear.

'No-nor yet father's. 'Tis a town-bred step, David. Cannot you hear the mincing tread, as if he thought the sweet yard-litter could hurt a body's feet?'

Ay, now you name it, so I can. Treads nipperty-like, as a cat does. Mistrust that sort of going, I. Who can he be, Priscilla ?'

'Some stranger likely. Someone that's never smelled the warmth of a cattle-byre, so I should say.'

The footsteps sounded near and hurried now, but still there was that delicate, lady-like treading across what Priscilla had named the sweet yard-litter. David and the girl, looking from the shadows of the mistal into the open sunlight, saw a welldressed figure of a man—a man neither short nor tall, neither dark nor fair-a man no way remarkable, unless the sun was full upon him, and, seeing him from a shadowed place, you noted the uncertain eyes which long ago had been a puzzle to his mother when he stood beside her knee.

'There was no one at Good Intent, except old Martha,' said the new-comer, lifting his hat with an air which David Blake could not have copied had Priscilla's love depended on it. She told me you were here-" likely," she added, in the queer speech I used to know, "seeing the roan cow was sick, and you were tending her." Priscilla, surely you've not forgotten me?'

David Blake was the best-tempered man in all the long vale of Strathgarth, so folk said; but there were times when he was as ill to meet, as ill to look at, as if he had been a north-born dog guarding a north-built threshold from a stranger he distrusted. And David listened to this prit-a-prat man who tried to mimic old Martha's wholesome speech; and Priscilla, glancing sideways at the man who should have wooed her in the mistal- as women will glance toward a known lover from a rival known by instinctPriscilla saw David Blake in a new guise, and one not pleasant to her on this peaceful day of spring.

She smiled at the new-comer, inclining her head a little in the pretty, willowy fashion that Garth village loved. You've the better of me,' she said. I do not remember you at all. Stay, though,' she added, seeing the sunlight on his face, with its inscrut. able, wild eyes, 'I seem now to have known you long ago.'

'Five years ago, Priscilla,' he answered, with a laugh which

David swore was false to the note of throstles and all wholesome things.

'You ask me to remember some one I knew at fourteen,' said Priscilla quietly. It seems long ago to me.'

David went to smooth the flanks of the roan cow, who turned her head and licked his waistcoat tranquilly from the topmost to the lowest button.

'I know him now,' growled the smith. Garth has been well rid of him these five years, to my thinking. Pity he's come back.' He glanced again at the other man, and was overtaken by an impulse to throw his adversary bodily out of the mistal-yard; so he pulled himself together, as one who was accustomed to follow kindly instincts only.

'Well, I'll be jogging, Priscilla,' he said, making for the door. 'The cow is ailing naught so much, and 'tis time I got to smithywork again.'

'So you've forgotten me too, David?' said the stranger airily, as Blake was pushing past him.

Nay,' answered David, not seeing the proffered hand. 'I remember you well, Gaunt of Marshlands-and I'll bid you goodday, as I was ever glad to do.'

CHAPTER II.

THAT'S a pleasant sort of welcome, eh?" said Reuben Gaunt, as he watched David's broad back disappear round the corner of the stables.

Priscilla's interest was awakened already, and the smith had done an ill turn to his own cause by arousing her sympathy as well. 'You'll find pleasanter welcomes here in Garth,' the girl answered, with that candour of thought and expression which in itself was dignity. It was stupid of me to forget you, Mr. Gaunt, but I was so little, when you used to play big brother to me and show me all the wonders of the Dene.'

'I think it must not be Mr. Gaunt. The folk who like me call me Reuben, as you did once.'

Priscilla was vaguely disturbed. Softness of speech and manner she understood, for she had ever been a favourite with the landed gentlefolk of Strathgarth; and, because she understood them, she detected the false note in Gaunt's would-be correctness. Yet she

pushed the distrust aside; for this man had been away from Garth for five long years, had seen the mysteries hidden in the beyond, and doubtless he could tell her of them.

'We are older now,' she answered, a little smile belying her rebuke. It must be Mr. Gaunt, or naught at all.'

'Well, then, it must be Miss Priscilla, too?'

"Twould be fitting, I think. Five years are not bridged in a moment, and father tells me I'm a woman grown, though I feel a child when the spring comes in as it is coming now.'

An older and more constant playmate than Gaunt of Marshlands sang to her-sang blithe and high-through the mistal-door; but she scarcely heard the throstle, for Gaunt brought news from the beyond.

'Where have you been these years past?' she asked, moving restlessly from foot to foot.

Everywhere, I fancy,' laughed the other. I've seen the world, as I always meant to do; and a queer world I've found it.'

As a child wipes the school-day's sums from its slate, Priscilla lost the record of her working and her playtime hours. The grey serenity of Garth, the sweetness of its roadside gardens, the slow, rich gossip of its folk-these things went by her. She forgot the low, musical humming of the churn, the look of the butter as it lay, round and golden as a kingcup, on the stone tables of the dairy. She heard no longer the splash of milk into the foamy pail, the lowing of the kine as they gave their evensong of praise.

Not restless now, she leaned against the stall, her eyes wandering now and then to Gaunt's, then returning to the mistal-yard and the croft beyond. She was listening to this man who had spent five years beyond the limits of Garth village, and his tales enthralled her. In an absent way she wondered that those wellknown fields, the familiar yard, had never seemed so small as now.

Reuben Gaunt was talking well. The picture of the girl, her lissome outline framed by the oaken stall, her hands clasped above her head, the lights and shadows of the mistal playing constantly about her eager eyes-these might well have moved a duller wit than Gaunt's to make the most of itself. And, when he stopped, Priscilla was silent, her head thrown further back and her glance going out and out, over the grey field-walls of Langstroth, over its dingles and its hills-out to the borderland, and across into the unknown.

'You have come back suddenly,' she said at last. 'None

knew in Garth that you were coming home, or we must have heard of it.'

'I chose to return unawares, and see what sort of welcome Garth would give me without preparation.-And, gad, I learned from David Blake quite soon enough,' he finished, with an easy laugh.

And shall you stay among us?'

He had been watching her during that long silence. Faults in plenty the man had, but in his way he could understand the finer lines of beauty; and now, as he met Priscilla's eyes, he found her exquisite-something as faultless, and yet as natural, as a harebell swaying to the wind.

'Yes, I shall stay,' he answered.

Her eyes fell, in answer, not to the words, but to the tone. And, because she had been wont to look all folk bravely in the eyes, she grew impatient of her shamefacedness.

'I cannot idle all the morning through,' she said. 'I'll give you good-day, Mr. Gaunt, and get to my housework.'

David Blake, meanwhile, had turned aside before he reached his smithy, and had crossed, by the stile at the road-corner, into the field where Farmer Hirst was busy hedge-cutting with his men.

'Hallo, David! Followed me up, like, have ye?' roared Hirst, as he chanced to turn his head while the smith was still half a field away.

6

'Ay, I like the sound and the look of cutting a thorn-hedge,' answered David, as he drew nearer. Thought I'd come and set ye straight if ye were showing faulty hedge-craft.'

The two farm men turned with their bill-hooks in their hands. They nodded at David and grinned at his simple pleasantry. Lithe, clean-built fellows they were, both of them, such as they breed within the boundaries of Strathgarth, and they were friends and, save in the matter of wage-earning, they were roughly the equals of their master.

'Come ye, then,' chuckled the farmer. See what we've done a'ready, David! See how trim and snug the whole line lies of it! Nay, not that way, lad!' he broke off, as one of the hands began to lay a stout hawthorn stem, sawn half-way through, all out of line with its fellow on the left.

He bent the branch as he would have it lie, then stepped aside -for a heavy man, Farmer Hirst was oddly active in his movements—and set to work to pluck a root of dog-briar from its deep