Gaunt had found the ostler in the inn-yard. “Dick,” he said, “has the coach gone by?”
“Not yet, sir. She’s late this morning, like, and that’s rare for Will the Driver.”
“Put the nag in the stable, Dick, and look well after her. I had forgotten that the coach went up this hour to Keta’s Well. Better drive than ride, eh, when there’s a long way to travel?”
“Well, that’s true. Better be carried than suit your knee-grip to a horse’s whimsies,” laughed the other, turning his straw from the left to the right side of his mouth.
Reuben strolled out into the highway. Not slow at any time, he had guessed, seeing Priscilla standing under the old elm with a basket in her hands, that she was waiting for the coach; and, though awhile since he had been sure that he meant to ride to a pigeon-match three miles away, he was certain now that he must go to Keta’s Well.
“Good day, Priscilla,” he said, with quiet surprise.
“Good day,” she answered, the wild-rose coming to her cheeks. “You did not see me, Mr. Gaunt, when you rode into the inn-yard.”
The ready lie came to Reuben’s tongue. Like water slipping down between the ferny streamways of the hills, he sought only the quiet pools—sought them at any hazard of the rocks that met his course.
“I feared I had lost the coach, Priscilla, and was riding hard to catch it.”
The wild-rose crimsoned into June in Cilla’s face. “Are you going, too, to Keta’s Well?” she asked.