The yeoman turned with a start. “David! Now, ye startled me, I own. I was just thinking o’ ye, and reckoning ’twould be all about time for ye to be taking shipboard home; and then your voice came sudden-like; and I fancied it must be your ghost, come to tell us you were drowned at sea. There’s the daft fool I’ve grown, David, since you left Garth!”
“There’s not much ghost about me,” laughed David, as he gripped the other’s hand with old-time strength.
“Well, no, if a grip like a pair o’ pincers be aught to go by. Stand ye there, David, and let me take a square look at ye. I’ve never been better pleased to see a man i’ my life.”
He walked around his friend, as if he were a specimen of farm stock whose points he was anxious to appraise correctly. Then he gave a great roar of approbation.
“Thought spring was treating me well when the ewes twinned so grandly, and scarce a lamb lost; but there was better to come, ’twould seem. David, ye’ll have to stay i’ Garth. ’Tis a different place without ye.”
David looked around him—at the pastures, full of the music of lambing-time, at the rough-built walls that traced a grey, irregular pattern across the green face of the land, at the spinneys and outlying barns which were so many landmarks to remembrance. Then he leaned his arms on the gate, and gave a quiet laugh.
“Oh, I’m here to stay,” he said. “The months have been years to me out yonder. It will take a lot to ’tice me out o’ Strathgarth Dale again.”
“So what of all those traveller’s tales ye promised Cilla? I tell ye, David, she looks for livelier doings than ever she saw at home.”
“Oh, I’ve tales enough, maybe. ’Tis a different life, but—”
“But naught so much to brag of?” put in Hirst “There! That’s just what I always said.”