“If that’s so, I’ll wait for him here with you, Peggy,” he said, holding his ground.
For a moment she relented. Gaunt was always showing her glimpses of a certain hardihood of courage which she liked to see in man or woman. Then she remembered Cilla, and saw again the look those two had worn as they came down the fields to meet her—came whispering, hand in hand, as if they robbed no woman of her birthright.
“Will you go?” she cried. “I’ve done with you, Reuben Gaunt, and you with me, and ’twill be a far day and an ill day that brings me within speaking length of you again.”
“As you like,” he said doggedly. “I only wanted to—”
“Ay, to explain! Reuben, I’m too old to your tricks.”
The tiredness and the scorn of those last words left Gaunt no choice. Without a word, he set a hand on the top bar of the gate, vaulted it, and passed out into the greyness of the night.
“He should end that way,” said Peggy, looking after him. “Sometimes he’ll take a three-barred gate too many, all in his easy style, and light on his head the further side.”
Tired out with passion, wearied of scorn, she turned to wander up the stream. And she met her lad, and walked with him; and he was known by the name of heart-break to the few who believe in such old-world superstitions.
Cilla of the Good Intent, meanwhile, after crossing the croft in safely and giving her owl’s call to Reuben, had gone indoors. Yeoman Hirst was sitting by the fire—it was rarely so warm in Garth, but what a fire o’ nights was pleasant—and he was nursing a long clay pipe in his hand. He had been counting his gains in live stock during this wonderful propitious lambing-time; but he looked up quickly as Priscilla entered, and in his glance there was that close-seated affection which proved Cilla right when she had said that “father would know if an eyelash lay out of its own proper place.”
“Look’st brave and well, Cilla!” was his greeting. “Got the wind to your cheeks, eh? Now, I do begin to think, spite o’ being your father, that you’ve some claim to winsomeness.”