“Oh, and, David—”
But the smith went forward, and laid the ewe in warm quarters, and struck up again into the snow by a track that avoided Widow Lister. Priscilla, meanwhile, had gone far up the brink-fields, in search of any roving sheep that might have been overblown before they could reach the lower pastures. It was Cilla’s way to seek always after the folk who had strayed.
She found no sheep; but, at the top of the highest brink-field she halted for a moment to look out and up to the face of the bleak high moors. The snow came sparingly now, the wind was falling, and far behind Sharprise Hill a yellow light crept softly through the snow-clouds.
At the wall-corner where Priscilla stood, three long pasture-fields met at the common drinking-trough—a round, deep pool, fed by a spring which bubbled up from the limestone at the bottom. One field of the three was owned by Gaunt, and he, too, was seeking strayed ewes this morning. They met face to face, he on one side of the pool, Cilla on the other, and they were silent for awhile, embarrassed by their memories of yesterday.
“A fit ending, eh, to sunshine and spring weather?” said Gaunt at last, with bitterness and something near to self-contempt.
Cilla’s pride had come to her aid. The wild-rose colour was in her cheeks, but her head was held high, and there was delicate scorn in the frank glance with which she answered Reuben’s.
“You are not used to weather, as we stay-at-homes are. It is all in the year’s work, Mr. Gaunt. To-morrow, or the next day after, we shall have forgotten there was snow at all—unless we lose any of the lambs.”
Gaunt was not slow-witted, and he understood that Cilla had taken firmer ground than he, and meant to stand on it hereafter. There was to be no hint between them, such as he had implied just now, that they had shared a day whose magic both regretted. He began to wonder if her heart had been in the matter at all, and a wayward impulse came to him to piece their broken love-tale together all afresh. Billy the Fool came up the field behind them. David, as he carried a couple of lambs to Good Intent, had met him in the roadway, and had suggested that there was rare play-work to be done in helping Farmer Hirst with the sheep.
“Never found such a game, I,” David had said, with his laugh that shook the hills, “as setting a daft ewe over your shoulders, or carrying a couple o’ lambkins i’ your arms. The sport might have been made for ye, lad Billy.”
So Billy had sought the pastures; and he chuckled soberly, as he scrunched through the snow, to think “what a terrible, queer notion David had for lighting on a bit of frolic.”