bed.

Twist and turn the root in his hands as he might, it would not budge.

"Tis all these durned leather gloves,' he said, throwing his gauntlets off. 'They keep the prickles out, David-or reckon to but when a body wants his naked hands-well, let him wear them naked.'

Again he tugged, but the old root would not give; so David grasped Priscilla's father by the middle, and Yoick!' he cried, and they pulled together. The root left its hold, more suddenly than they had counted on, and David, being the hinder of the two, bore the full brunt of the farmer's fall.

David the smith got to his feet by and by, and coaxed the wind back into his lungs. Farmer Hirst was laughing till the tears ran down his ruddy face; the men were laughing, too; so David, soon as he found breath, fetched out that slow, deep body-merriment of his.

'We got him out o' ground! Oh, ay, we daunted yond old briar-root!' said he.

Whereat the four laughed so heartily that a pair of curlewsjust returned, like Reuben Gaunt, from sojourning God knew where -got up from the further side of the fence, and went crying toward the moor.

'Briar-roots are the devil and all,' said Farmer Hirst, when ye come to clean a hedge-bottom.'

6

Bear bonnie roses all the same, when June comes in,' ventured the blacksmith, not telling Farmer Hirst that wild roses reminded him, too often for his peace of mind, of Priscilla. Pity to stump 'em up, say I, and pity came of my lending my hand to the job just now.'

He made pretence to rub himself, as if the farmer's bulk had raised painful sores on him. It is easy to laugh when the spring's a-coming in, and the four workers startled a black-faced ewe that was near to her first lambing season.

'Get away wi' your jests, David,' answered Farmer Hirst. 'D'ye think I want to have my lambs dropped hasty-like in the ditch down yonder?'

Yet by and by, when they had worked their fill at the hedgecutting, and it was dinner-time, David drew the farmer aside. He had not known till now what had brought him to the fields here, instead of to the smithy where he had urgent work to do. For the blacksmith's brain was like an eight-day clock that stands in the

kitchen corner; it moved slowly-tick-tack, tick-tack, with sober repetition, but, when the moment came to strike the hour, there was never any doubt as to the time he had in mind.

'John Hirst,' he said, 'ne'er mind your dinner yet awhile. I've somewhat lies on my chest, as a body might say.'

'Well, I ligged there not a long while since, a trifle sudden and a trifle hard,' laughed Hirst.

*‘Ah, now, will ye be quiet? I'm like Billy the Fool, as Priscilla said just now, and ye think I'm jesting when I'm trying to talk sober sense.'

'Dinner-time is sober sense, David, judging by my itch to get at cheese and bread and good brown ale. What then, lad? What ails ye?'

'I'm slow of speech, unlike my smithy-bellows,' went on the other doggedly. 'I find the right word always the day after tomorrow, instead of the day's minute that I want it.'

'I've a trick of the same kind myself, David. What then? Speech is speech, but trimming a thorn-hedge, or ploughing for your turnip-crop, is a sight better than hunting words, like badgers that only turn and maul the honest dogs of life. Tuts, David! Ye're yellow about the gills, and some trouble's sitting on ye, by that token.'

'Ay, some trouble is,' said David.

David's eyes

'Priscilla gave ye cake and ale?' put in the other anxiously. 'She forgot to offer it, and I forgot to lack it.' followed the neat line of the hedge, and he nodded gravely at Wish men were more like thorn-bushes, John-wish you could lop their unruliness, and twist their ill-grown branches into shape, and make a clean, useful hedge at the end of all.’

it.

Farmer Hirst was thinking of his dinner with gaining tenderness. 'What is in your mind, David, lad?' he asked. 'Tis like watching the kettle boil, this getting at your meaning.'

'Reuben Gaunt is back again in Garth,' the smith blurted out. 'That's my meaning, John, and I tell you we could well have let him stay t'other side of the world, and ne'er have missed him.'

The farmer's face clouded for a moment. We could have spared him-ay. But what then? Because a fool chooses to come home again, are we to go pulling fiddle-faces on a blithesome day like this? Hark ye, David, I'll not bide a minute longer; there's cheese and ale all waiting in the hedge-bottom yonder, and you're going to share it with us.'

So David laid his trouble aside for the moment, and the four of them sat on the sunny hedge-bank, and said little until for the second or third time they took more cheese to help the butter out, or more bread to help the cheese out, or another pull of ale to settle the lot trimly into place.'

'Wonderful March weather,' said the farmer, draining a last draught. Near to April, and not a lamb-storm yet. Twill be twelve year since I remember such a spring.'

'Found a primrose fair in bloom this morn,' said one of the farm-men. 'Wonderful weather, I'll own, farmer-but what's to come with April? Mistrust these easiful, quiet March-times myself.'

'Ah, get ye along!' cried Farmer Hirst. Believe the best o' the weather, I, and always did. They laugh at me in Shepston market-say I'm no true farmer, because I'll not speak o' the weather as if she were a jade for any man to mock at.'

There was a silence, while the men lay tranquilly against the bank and watched the blue sky trail her draperies of cool, white fleece across the west wind's track.

'Reuben Gaunt is back, I've heard,' said one of the farmhands presently. Came last night, all unbeknownst-like, same fashion as he left, five years since.'

'There'll be brisk times for the lasses, then,' put in his fellow drily.

Again the farmer's face darkened for a moment. "Tis worktime, lads, not gossip-time, and many a yard of hedge to fettle up before we get our suppers."

'I'll be getting to my own work, too,' said David, nodding his farewells and moving down the field.

At another time he would have put his own work off, would have taken a hand till nightfall with the hedge-trimmers, would have given them jest for jest and laugh for laugh, while he trimmed, and cut, and bent the hawthorn boughs into their place. But to-day he could not.

There'll be a brisk time for the lasses, then,' he muttered, echoing the farm-hand's idle speech. Ay, there's always trouble o' that sort when Reuben Gaunt's at hand.'

Through the quiet fields he went, but they brought little benediction to him. He remembered Gaunt and all his ways, remembered how, when he left Garth, there had been no sadness in the men's faces, but grief and bitterness in many women's.

'What the dangment do they see in him, these lasses?' growled David, as he climbed the wall and dropped into the high road. 'Littlish in the build-face as good to look at as a mangoldwurzel's—must be those devil's eyes of his, that never lie still for a moment, but go hunting like a dog that sniffs a fresh scent every yard.'

David had summed up his man with unerring judgment in that last thought so far, that is, as we can judge of any man. Had Gaunt been downright evil, it would have been easier for the men of Garth to have thrashed him long ago into a likelier and more wholesome habit. But even to-day, when he was in a mood that, for him, was bitter, the blacksmith knew that his enemy was neither good nor bad, but purposeless. He had watched him grow from childhood; and year by year his name of Reuben seemed more and more a prophecy of days to come.

'Unstable as water-ay, just that,' thought David, as he reached the smithy.

Billy the Fool, after dusting the smithy-fire with coke and smudge, had settled himself to sleep again; but he was awake on the instant when David's footsteps sounded on the roadway. He rose, and shook himself with a big, heedless satisfaction.

'I've been a-dreaming, David the Smith,' was his greeting. 'Dreamed I was wise, like ye are at most times-saving when Miss Priscilla comes.'

'Ay?' said the other, patting Billy on the shoulder.

'Didn't like it, David! Glad to waken is Billy the Fool. There wasn't no frolic in't.'

'None at all, so I should think. No news, eh, since I left you in the smithy here?'

It was the habit in Garth village to ask Billy the Fool for news, however many times a day you met him, though none could say how the idle custom had first come into use.

'Ay, there's news. I've been at my games again, David the Smith.' A smile broadened slowly across the placid face, while the blacksmith listened good-humouredly.

'Never met your likes for games, Billy,' he said, fingering his tools after the fashion of a man who means to begin work by and by, but not just yet.

David, indeed, was thinking less of work, and less of Billy the Fool, than of the encounter in the mistal. Reuben Gaunt had come like a shadow between the springtime and himself, had blurred the

sun for him keen to foresee, as slow men often are, the blacksmith felt as if a blight had fallen on Garth village, checking the warmth, holding the green buds in their sheaths.

'I'd looked to your

Yet Billy the Fool soon claimed his ear. fire,' went on the natural, and stepped out into the road, to see what time o' day it was. Perhaps a half-hour since it was-and what d'ye think, David the Smith ? '

'Couldn't guess, lad, couldn't guess.'

'Well, there was a littlish man, all dressed up as if 'twere Sunday; and he came down the road, and I knew he'd been to Good Intent.'

David glanced sharply up. 'Miss Priscilla lives there.

How did you know that?' All the younger men-and happen a few o' the old 'uns too-will always be wending Good Intent way when the spring comes in. Habit o' theirs, David the Smithhabit o' theirs! Wend that way myself sometimes.'

The blacksmith, not for the first time, was puzzled by Billy the Fool. The natural's unerring instinct for all that made for the primitive in bird or beast or human-folk, when coupled with his child's disdain of everyday good sense, would have troubled keener wits than David's. He recognised Reuben Gaunt, moreover, from the other's description, and he fingered his tools no longer, but followed Billy's story.

'Came whistling down the road, did the littlish chap. I wondered, like, at what, for ye or me could have outsized him two or three times over.'

David laughed, though he was little in the mood for it. At every turn of his path to-day-whether he were talking to Priscilla, or dining in the hedge-bottom with Farmer Hirst, or talking to Billy the Fool-Gaunt's shadow crossed his path. Yet he laughed, for he was simple, too, and big, and there was something that tickled his fancy in this quiet assumption that little men had little right to whistle on the Queen's highway.

'Came whistling down, did he?' asked the blacksmith, strangely eager for the story.

Ay, and stopped when he saw me. "Flick-a-moroo ! says he, and twitched my chin, and seemed to think he'd played a jest on me.' Again David chuckled; for there was none in the Dale of Langstroth that could mimic a man as faithfully as Billy the Fool, and he had caught Gaunt's mincing accent to the life.

'Flick-a-moroo, says I, easy as answering a blackbird when he