Clement Hicks paid an early visit to Will’s home upon the following morning. He had already set out to Okehampton with ten pounds of honey in the comb, and at Mrs. Blanchard’s cottage he stopped the little public vehicle which ran on market-days to the distant town. That the son of the house was up and away at dawn told his family nothing, for his movements were at all times erratic, and part of his duty consisted in appearing on the river at uncertain times and in unexpected localities. Clement Hicks often called for a moment upon his way to market, and Chris, who now greeted her lover, felt puzzled at the unusual gravity of his face. She turned pale when she heard his tremendous news; but the mother was of more Spartan temperament and received intelligence of Will’s achievement without changing colour or ceasing from her occupation.

Between Damaris Blanchard and her boy had always existed a perfect harmony of understanding, rare even in their beautiful relationship. The thoughts of son and mother chimed; not seldom they anticipated each other’s words. The woman saw much of her dead husband reflected in Will and felt a moral conviction that through the storms of youth, high temper, and inexperience, he would surely pass to good things, by reason of the strenuous honesty and singleness of purpose that actuated him; he, on his side, admired the great calmness and self-possession of his mother. She was so steadfast, so strong, and wiser than any woman he had ever seen. With a fierce, volcanic affection Will Blanchard loved her. She and Phoebe alike shared his whole heart.

“It is a manly way of life he has chosen, and that is all I may say. He is ambitious and strong, and I should be the last to think he has not done well to go into the world for a while,” said Clement.

“When is he coming back again?” asked Chris.

“He spoke of ten years or so.”

“Then ’twill be more or less,” declared Mrs. Blanchard, calmly. “Maybe a month, maybe five years, or fifteen, not ten, if he said ten. He’ll shaw the gude gold he’s made of, whether or no. I’m happy in this and not surprised. ’Twas very like to come arter last night, if things went crooked.”

“’Tis much as faither might have done,” said Chris.

“’Tis much what he did do. Thank you for calling, Clem Hicks. Now best be away, else they’ll drive off to Okehampton without ’e.”

Clement departed, Chris wept as the full extent of her loss was impressed upon her, and Mrs. Blanchard went up to her son’s room. There she discovered the velveteen suit with a card upon them: “Hand over to Mr. Morgan, Head Water-keeper, Sandypark.” She looked through his things, and found that he had taken nothing but his money, one suit of working clothes, and a red tie—her present to him on his birthday during the previous month. All his other possessions remained in their usual places. With none to see, the woman’s eye moistened; then she sat down on Will’s bed and her heart grew weak for one brief moment as she pictured him fighting the battle. It hurt her a little that he had told Clement Hicks his intention and hid it from his mother. Yet as a son, at least, he had never failed. However, all affairs of life were a matter of waiting, more or less, she told herself; and patience was easier to Damaris Blanchard than to most people. Under her highest uneasiness, maternal pride throbbed at thought of the manly independence indicated by her son’s action. She returned to the duties of the day, but found herself restless, while continually admonishing Chris not to be so. Her thoughts drifted to Monks Barton and Will’s meeting with his sweetheart’s father. Presently, when her daughter went up to the village, Mrs. Blanchard put off her apron, donned the cotton sunbonnet that she always wore from choice, and walked over to see Mr. Lyddon. They were old friends, and presently Damaris listened sedately to the miller without taking offence at his directness of speech. He told the story of his decision and Will’s final reply, while she nodded and even smiled once or twice in the course of the narrative.

“You was both right, I reckon,” she said placidly, looking into Mr. Lyddon’s face. “You was wise to mistrust, not knawin’ what’s at the root of him; and he, being as he is, was in the right to tell ’e the race goes to the young. Wheer two hearts is bent on joining, ’tis join they will—if both keeps of a mind long enough.”

“That’s it, Damaris Blanchard; who’s gwaine to b’lieve that a bwoy an’ gal, like Will an’ Phoebe, do knaw theer minds? Mark me, they’ll both chaange sweethearts a score of times yet ’fore they come to mate.”

“Caan’t speak for your darter, Lyddon; but I knaw my son. A masterful bwoy, like his faither before him, wild sometimes an’ wayward tu, but not with women-folk. His faither loved in wan plaace awnly. He’ll be true to your cheel whatever betides, or I’m a fule.”

“What’s the use of that if he ban’t true to himself? No, no, I caan’t see a happy ending to the tale however you look at it. Wish I could. I fear’t was a ugly star twinkled awver his birthplace, ma’am.”

“’Twas all the stars of heaven, Miller,” said the mother, frankly, “for he was born in my husband’s caravan in the auld days. We was camped up on the Moor, drawn into one of them roundy-poundies o’ grey granite stones set up by Phoenicians at the beginning of the world. Ess fay, a braave shiny night, wi’ the li’l windows thrawed open to give me air. An’ ’pon Will’s come-of-age birthday, last month, if us didn’t all drive up theer an’ light a fire an’ drink a dish of tea in the identical spot! ’Tis out Newtake’ way.”

“Like a story-book.”

“’Twas Clem Hicks, his thought, being a fanciful man. But I’ll bid you gude-marnin’ now. Awnly mind this, as between friends and without a spark of malice: Will Blanchard means to marry your maid, sure as you’m born, if awnly she keeps strong for him. It rests with her, Miller, not you.”

“Much what your son said in sharper words. Well, you’m out o’ reckoning for once, wise though you be most times; for if a maiden’s happiness doan’t rest with her faither, blamed if I see wheer it should. And to think such a man as me doan’t knaw wiser ’n two childern who caan’t number forty year between ’em is flat fulishness, surely?”

“I knaw Will,” said Mrs. Blanchard, slowly and emphatically; “I knaw un to the core, and that’s to say more than you or anybody else can. A mother may read her son like print, but no faither can see to the bottom of a wife-old daughter—not if he was Solomon’s self. So us’ll wait an’ watch wi’out being worse friends.”

She went home again the happier for her conversation; but any thought that Mr. Lyddon might have been disposed to devote to her prophecy was for the time banished by the advent of John Grimbal and his brother.

Like boys home from school, they dwelt in the present delight of their return, and postponed the varied duties awaiting them, to revel again in the old sights, sounds, and scents. To-day they were about an angling excursion, and the fishers’ road to Fingle lying through Monks Barton, both brothers stopped a while and waited upon their old friend of the mill, according to John’s promise of the previous afternoon. Martin carried the creel and the ample luncheon it contained; John smoked a strong cigar and was only encumbered with his light fly-rod; the younger designed to accompany his brother through Fingle Valley; then leave him there, about his sport, and proceed alone to various places of natural and antiquarian interest. But John meant fishing and nothing else. To him great woods were no more than cover for fur and feathers; rivers and streams meant a vehicle for the display of a fly to trout, and only attracted him or the reverse, according to the fish they harboured. When the moorland waters spouted and churned, cherry red from their springs in the peat, he deemed them a noble spectacle; when, as at present, Teign herself had shrunk to a mere silver thread, and the fingerling trout splashed and wriggled half out of water in the shallows, he freely criticised its scanty volume and meagre depths.

Miller Lyddon welcomed the men very heartily. He had been amongst those who dismissed them with hope to their battle against the world, and now he reminded them of his sanguine predictions. Will Blanchard’s disappearance amused John Grimbal and he laughed when Billy Blee appeared red-hot with the news. Mr. Lyddon made no secret of his personal opinion of Blanchard, and all debated the probable design of the wanderer.

“Maybe he’s ’listed,” said John, “an’ a good thing too if he has. It makes a man of a young fellow. I’m for conscription myself—always have been.”

“I be minded to think he’ve joined the riders,” declared Billy. “Theer comed a circus here last month, with braave doin’s in the way of horsemanship and Merry Andrews, and such like devilries. Us all goes to see it from miles round every year; an’ Will was theer. Circus folk do see the world in a way denied to most, and theer manner of life takes ’em even as far as Russia and the Indies I’ve heard.”

“Then there’s the gypsy blood in him—” declared Mr. Lyddon, “that might send him roaming oversea, if nothing else did.”

“Or my great doings are like to have fired him,” said John. “How’s Phoebe?” he continued, dismissing Will. “I saw her yesterday—a bowerly maiden she’s grown—a prize for a better man that this wild youngster, now bolted God knaws where.”

“So I think,” agreed the miller, “an’ I hope she’ll soon forget the searching grey eyes of un and his high-handed way o’ speech. Gals like such things. Dear, dear! though he made me so darned angry last night, I could have laughed in his faace more ’n wance.”

“Missy’s under the weather this marnin’,” declared Billy. “Who tawld her I ban’t able to say, but she knawed he’d gone just arter feedin’ the fowls, and she went down valley alone, so slow, wi’ her purty head that bent it looked as if her sunbonnet might be hiding an auld gran’mother’s poll.”

“She’ll come round,” said Martin; “she’s only a young girl yet.”

“And there ’s fish as good in the sea as ever came out, and better,” declared his brother. “She must wait for a man who is a man,—somebody of good sense and good standing, with property to his name.”

Miller Lyddon noted with surprise and satisfaction John Grimbal’s warmth of manner upon this question; he observed also the stout, hearty body of him, and the handsome face that crowned it. Then the brothers proceeded down-stream, and the master of Monks Barton looked after them and caught himself hoping that they might meet Phoebe.

At a point where the river runs between a giant shoulder of heather-clad hill on one side and the ragged expanses of Whiddon Park upon the other, John clambered down to the streamside and began to fish, while Martin dawdled at hand and watched the sport. A pearly clearness, caught from the clouds, characterised earth as well as air, and proved that every world-picture depends for atmosphere and colour upon the sky-picture extended above it. Again there was movement and some music, for the magic of the wind in a landscape’s nearer planes is responsible for both. The wooded valley lay under a grey and breezy forenoon; swaying alders marked each intermittent gust with a silver ripple of upturned foliage, and still reaches of the river similarly answered the wind with hurrying flickers and furrows of dimpled light. Through its transparent flood, where the waters ran in shadow and escaped reflections, the river revealed a bed of ruddy brown and rich amber. This harmonious colouring proceeded from the pebbly bottom, where a medley of warm agate tones spread and shimmered, like some far-reaching mosaic beneath the crystal. Above Teign’s shrunken current extended oak and ash, while her banks bore splendid concourse of the wild water-loving dwellers in that happy valley. Meadowsweet nodded creamy crests; hemlock and fool’s parsley and seeding willow-herb crowded together beneath far-scattered filigree of honeysuckles and brambles with berries, some ripe, some red; while the scarlet corals of briar and white bryony gemmed every riotous trailing thicket, dene, and dingle along the river’s brink; and in the grassy spaces between rose little chrysoprase steeples of wood sage all set in shining fern. Upon the boulders in midstream subaqueous mosses, now revealed and starved by the drought, died hard, and the seeds of grasses, figworts, and persicarias thrust up flower and foliage, flourishing in unwonted spots from which the next freshet would rudely tear them. Insect life did not abundantly manifest itself, for the day was sunless; but now and again, with crisp rattle of his gauze wings, a dragon-fly flashed along the river. Through these scenes the Teign rolled drowsily and with feeble pulses. Upon one bank rose the confines of Whiddon; on the other, abrupt and interspersed with gulleys of shattered shale, ascended huge slopes whereon a whole summer of sunshine had scorched the heather to dry death. But fading purple still gleamed here and there in points and splashes, and the lesser furze, mingling therewith, scattered gold upon the tremendous acclivities even to the crown of fir-trees that towered remote and very blue upon the uplifted sky-line. Swallows, with white breasts flashing, circled over the river, and while their elevation above the water appeared at times tremendous, the abrupt steepness of the gorge was such that the birds almost brushed the hillside with their wings. A sledge, laden with the timber of barked sapling oaks, creaked and jingled over the rough road beside the stream; a man called to his horses and a dog barked beside him; then they disappeared and the spacious scene was again empty, save for its manifold wild life and music.

John Grimbal fished, failed, and cursed the poor water and the lush wealth of the riverside that caught his fly at every critical moment. A few small trout he captured and returned; then, flinging down rod and net, he called to his brother for the luncheon-basket. Together they sat in the fern beside the river and ate heartily of the fare that Mrs. Blanchard had provided; then, as John was about to light a pipe, his brother, with a smile, produced a little wicker globe and handed it to him. This unexpected sight awoke sudden and keen appetite on the elder’s face. He smacked his lips, swore a hearty oath of rejoicing, and held out an eager hand for the thing.

“My God! to think I’ll suck the smoke of that again,—the best baccy in the wide world!”

The little receptacle contained a rough sort of sun-dried Kaffir tobacco, such as John and Martin had both smoked for the past fifteen years.

“I thought it would be a treat. I brought home a few pounds,” said the younger, smiling again at his brother’s hungry delight. John cut into the case, loaded his pipe, and lighted it with a contented sign. Then he handed the rest back to its owner.

“No, no,” said Martin. “I’ll just have one fill, that’s all. I brought this for you. ’T will atone for the poor sport. The creel I shall leave with you now, for I’m away to Fingle Bridge and Prestonbury. We’ll meet at nightfall.”

Thereupon he set off down the valley, his mind full of early British encampments, while John sat and smoked and pondered upon his future. He built no castles in the air, but a solid country house of red brick, destined to stand in its own grounds near Chagford, and to have a snug game-cover or two about it, with a few good acres of arable land bordering on forest. Roots meant cover for partridges in John Grimbal’s mind; beech and oak in autumn represented desirable food for pheasants; and corn, once garnered and out of the way, left stubble for all manner of game.

Meantime, whilst he reviewed his future with his eyes on a blue cloud of tobacco smoke, Martin passed Phoebe Lyddon farther down the valley. Him she recognised as a stranger; but he, with his eyes engaged in no more than unconscious guarding of his footsteps, his mind buried in the fascinating problems of early British castramentation, did not look at her or mark a sorrowful young face still stained with tears.

Into the gorge Phoebe had wandered after reading her sweetheart’s letter. There, to the secret ear of the great Mother, instinct had drawn her and her grief; and now the earliest shock was over; a dull, numb pain of mind followed the first sorrow; unwonted exercise had made her weary; and physical hunger, not to be stayed by mental suffering, forced her to turn homewards. Red-eyed and unhappy she passed beside the river, a very picture of a woful lover.

The sound of Phoebe’s steps fell on John Grimbal’s ear as he lay upon his back with crossed knees and his hands behind his head. He partly rose therefore, thrust his face above the fern, saw the wayfarer, and then sprang to his feet. The cause of her tearful expression and listless demeanour was known to him, but he ignored them and greeted her cheerily.

“Can’t catch anything big enough to keep, and sha’n’t until the rain comes,” he said; “so I’ll walk along with you, if you’re going home.”

He offered his hand; then, after Phoebe had shaken it, moved beside her and put up his rod as he went.

“Saw your father this morning, and mighty glad I was to find him so blooming. To my eye he looks younger than my memory picture of him. But that’s because I’ve grown from boy to man, as you have from child to woman.”

“So I have, and ’t is a pity my faither doan’t knaw it,” answered Phoebe, smarting under her wrongs, and willing to chronicle them in a friendly ear. “If I ban’t full woman, who is? Yet I’m treated like a baaby, as if I’d got no ’pinions an’ feelings, and wasn’t—wasn’t auld enough to knaw what love meant.”

Grimbal’s eyes glowed at the picture of the girl’s indignation, and he longed to put his arms round her and comfort her.

“You must be wise and dutiful, Phoebe,” he said. “Will Blauchard’s a plucky fellow to go off and face the world. And perhaps he’ll be one of the lucky ones, like I was.”

“He will be, for certain, and so you’d say if you knawed him same as I do. But the cruel waitin’—years and years and years—’t is enough to break a body’s heart.”

Her voice fluttered like bells in a wild wind; she trembled on the brink of tears; and he saw by little convulsive movements and the lump in her round throat that she could not yet regard her lot with patience. She brought out her pocket-handkerchief again, and the man noticed it was all wet and rolled into a ball.

“Life’s a blank thing at lovers’ parting,” he said; “but time rubs the rough edges off matters that fret our minds the worst. Days and nights, and plenty of ’em, are the best cure for all ills.”

“An’ the best cure for life tu! The awnly cure. Think of years an’ years without him. Yesterday us met up in Pixies’ Parlour yonder, an’ I was peart an’ proud as need be; to-day he’s gone, and I feel auld and wisht and all full of weary wonder how I’m gwaine to fare and if I’llever see him again. ’T is cruel—bitter cruel for me.”

That she could thus pity herself so soon argued a mind incapable of harbouring great sorrow for many years; and the man at her side, without appreciating this fact, yet, by a sort of intuition, suspected that Phoebe’s grief, perhaps even her steadfastness of purpose, would suffer diminution before very great lapse of time. Without knowing why, he hoped it might be so. Her voice fell melodiously upon an ear long tuned to the whine of native women. It came from the lungs, was full and sweet, with a shy suddenness about it, like the cooing of wood doves. She half slipped at a stile, and he put out his hand and touched her waist and felt his heart throb. But Phoebe’s eyes rarely met her new friend’s. The girl looked with troubled brows ahead into the future, while she walked beside him; and he, upon her left hand, saw only the soft cheek, the pouting lips, and the dimples that came and went. Sometimes she looked up, however, and Grimbal noted how the flutter of past tears shook her round young breast, marked the spring of her step, the freedom of her gait, and the trim turn of her feet and ankles. After the flat-footed Kaffir girls, Phoebe’s instep had a right noble arch in his estimation.

“To think that I, as never wronged faither in thought or deed, should be treated so hard! I’ve been all the world to him since mother died, for he’s said as much to many; yet he’s risen up an’ done this, contrary to justice and right and Scripture, tu.”

“You must be patient, Phoebe, and respect his age, and let the matter rest till the time grows ripe. I can’t advise you better than that.”

“’Patient!’ My life’s empty, I tell ’e—empty, hollow, tasteless wi’out my Will.”

“Well, well, we’ll see. I’m going to build a big red-brick house presently, and buy land, and make a bit of a stir in my small way. You’ve a pretty fancy in such things, I’ll bet a dollar. You shall give me a helping hand—eh? You must tell me best way of setting up house. And you might help me as to furniture and suchlike if you had time for it. Will you, for an old friend?”

Phoebe was slightly interested. She promised to do anything in her power that might cause Mr. Grimbal satisfaction; and he, very wisely, assured her that there was no salve for sorrow like unselfish labours on behalf of other people. He left her at the farm-gate, and tramped back to the Blanchard cottage with his mind busy enough. Presently he changed his clothes, and set a diamond in his necktie. Then he strolled away into the village, to see the well-remembered names above the little shop windows; to note curiously how Chagford market-place had shrunk and the houses dwindled since last he saw them; to call with hearty voice and rough greeting at this habitation and that; to introduce himself again among men and women who had known him of yore, and who, for the most part, quite failed to recognise in their bluff and burly visitor the lad who set forth from his father’s cottage by the church so many years before.

Of Blanchard family history a little more must be said. Timothy Blanchard, the husband of Damaris and father of Will and Chris, was in truth of the nomads, though not a right gypsy. As a lad, and at a time when the Romany folk enjoyed somewhat more importance and prosperity than of late years, he joined them, and by sheer force of character and mother wit succeeded in rising to power amongst the wanderers. The community with which he was connected for the most part confined its peregrinations to the West; and time saw Timothy Blanchard achieve success in his native country, acquire two caravans, develop trade on a regular “circuit,” and steadily save money in a small way; while his camp of some five-and-twenty souls—men, women, and numerous children—shared in their leader’s prosperity. These earlier stages of the man’s career embraced some strange circumstances, chief amongst them being his marriage. Damaris Ford was the daughter of a Moor farmer. Her girlhood had been spent in the dreary little homestead of “Newtake,” above Chagford, within the fringe of the great primeval wastes; and here, on his repeated journeys across the Moor, Tim Blanchard came to know her and love her well.

Farmer Ford swore round oaths, and sent Blanchard and his caravans packing when the man approached him for his daughter’s hand; but the girl herself was already won, and week after her lover’s repulse Damaris vanished. She journeyed with her future husband to Exeter, wedded him, and became mistress of his house on wheels; then, for the space of four years, she lived the gypsy life, brought a son and daughter into the world, and tried without avail to obtain her father’s forgiveness. That, however, she never had, though her mother communicated with her in fear and trembling; and when, by strange chance, on Will’s advent, Damaris Blanchard was brought to bed near her old home, and became a mother in one of the venerable hut circles which plentifully scatter that lonely region, Mrs. Ford, apprised of the fact in secret, actually stole to her daughter’s side by night and wept over her grandchild. Now the farmer and his wife were dead; Newtake at present stood without a tenant; and Mrs. Blanchard possessed no near relations save her children and one elder brother, Joel, to whom had passed their parent’s small savings.

Timothy Blanchard continued a wandering existence for the space of five years after his marriage; then he sold his caravans, settled in Chagford, bought the cottage by the river, rented some market-garden land, and pursued his busy and industrious way. Thus he prospered through ten more years, saving money, developing a variety of schemes, letting out on hire a steam thresher, and in various other ways adding to his store. The man was on the high road to genuine prosperity when death overtook him and put a period to his ambitions. He was snatched from mundane affairs leaving numerous schemes half developed and most of his money embarked in various enterprises. Unhappily Will was too young to continue his father’s work, and though Mrs. Blanchard’s brother, Joel Ford, administered the little estate to the best of his power, much had to be sacrificed. In the sequel Damaris found herself with a cottage, a garden, and an annual income of about fifty pounds a year. Her son was then twelve years of age, her daughter eighteen months younger. So she lived quietly and not without happiness, after the first sorrow of her husband’s loss was in a measure softened by time.

Of Mr. Joel Ford it now becomes necessary to speak. Combining the duties of attorney, house-agent, registrar of deaths, births, and marriages, and receiver of taxes and debts, the man lived a dingy life at Newton Abbot. Acid, cynical, and bald he was, very dry of mind and body, and but ten years older than Mrs. Blanchard, though he looked nearer seventy than sixty. To the Newton mind Mr. Ford was associated only with Quarter Day—that black, recurrent cloud on the horizon of every poor man’s life. He dwelt with an elderly housekeeper—a widow of genial disposition; and indeed the attorney himself was not lacking in some urbanity of character, though few guessed it, for he kept all that was best in himself hidden under an unlovely crust. His better instincts took the shape of family affection. Damaris Blanchard and he were the last branches of one of the innumerable families of Ford to be found in Devon, and he had no small regard for his only living sister. His annual holiday from business—a period of a fortnight, sometimes extended to three weeks if the weather was more than commonly fair—he spent habitually at Chagford; and Will on these occasions devoted his leisure to his uncle, drove him on the Moor, and made him welcome. Will, indeed, was a favourite with Mr. Ford, and the lad’s high spirits, real ignorance of the world, and eternal grave assumption of wisdom even tickled the man of business into a sort of dry cricket laughter upon occasions. When, therefore, a fortnight after young Blanchard’s mysterious disappearance, Joel Ford arrived at his sister’s cottage for the annual visit, he was as much concerned as his nature had power to make him at the news.

For three weeks he stayed, missing the company of his nephew not a little; and his residence in Chagford had needed no special comment save for an important incident resulting therefrom.

Phoebe Lyddon it was who in all innocence and ignorance set rolling a pebble that finally fell in thundering avalanches; and her chance word was uttered at her father’s table on an occasion when John and Martin Grimbal were supping at Monks Barton.

The returned natives, and more especially the elder, had been much at the mill since their reappearance. John, indeed, upon one pretext or another, scarcely spent a day without calling. His rough kindness appealed to Phoebe, who at first suspected no danger from it, while Mr. Lyddon encouraged the man and made him and his brother welcome at all times.

That a man of many nerves, uncertain in temper and with no physical or temporal qualifications, should have won for himself the handsomest girl in Chagford caused the unreflective to marvel whenever they considered the point. But a better knowledge of Chris Blauchard had served in some measure to explain the wonder. Of all women, she was the least likely to do the thing predicted by experience. She had tremendous force of character for one scarce twenty years of age; indeed, she lived a superlative life, and the man, woman, child, or dog that came within radius of her existence presently formed a definite part of it, and was loved or detested according to circumstances. Neutrality she could not understand. If her interests were wide, her prejudices were strong. A certain unconscious high-handedness of manner made the circle of her friends small, but those who did love her were enthusiastic. Upon the whole, the number of those who liked her increased with years, and avowed enemies had no very definite reasons for aversion. Of her physical perfections none pretended two opinions; but the boys had always gone rather in fear of Chris, and the few men who had courted her during the past few years were all considerably her seniors. No real romance entered into this young woman’s practical and bustling life until the advent of Clement Hicks, though she herself was the flame of hearts not a few before his coming.

Neurotic, sensual, as was Chris herself in a healthy fashion, a man of varying moods, and perhaps the richer for faint glimmerings of the real fire, Hicks yet found himself no better than an aimless, helpless child before the demands of reality. Since boyhood he had lived out of touch with his environment. As bee-keeper and sign-writer he made a naked living for himself and his mother, and achieved success sufficient to keep a cottage roof over their heads, but that was all. Books were his only friends; the old stones of the Moor, the lonely wastes, the plaintive music of a solitary bird were the companions of his happiest days. He had wit enough to torture half his waking hours with self-analysis, and to grit his teeth at his own impotence. But there was no strength, no virile grip to take his fate in his own hands and mould it like a man. He only mourned his disadvantages, and sometimes blamed destiny, sometimes a congenital infirmity of purpose, for the dreary course of his life. Nature alone could charm his sullen moods, and that not always. Now and again she spread over the face of his existence a transitory contentment and a larger hope; but the first contact with facts swept it away again. His higher aspirations were neither deep nor enduring, and yet the man’s love of nature was lofty and just, and represented all the religion he had. No moral principles guided him, conscience never pricked. Nevertheless, thus far he had been a clean liver and an honest man. Vice, because it affronted his sense of the beautiful and usually led towards death, did not attract him. He lived too deep in the lap of Nature to be deceived by the pseudo-realism then making its appearance in literature, and he laughed without mirth at these pictures from city-bred pens at that time paraded as the whole truth of the countryman’s life. The later school was not then above the horizon; the brief and filthy spectacle of those who dragged their necrosis, marasmus, and gangrene of body and mind across the stage of art and literature, and shrieked Decay, had not as yet appeared to make men sicken; the plague-spot, now near healed, had scarce showed the faintest angry symptom of coming ill. Hicks might under no circumstances have been drawn in that direction, for his morbidity was of a different description. Art to this man appeared only in what was wholesome; it even embraced a guide to conduct, for it led him directly to Nature, and Nature emphatically taught him the value of obedience, the punishment of weakness, the reward for excess and every form of self-indulgence. But a softness in him shrank from these aspects of the Mother. He tried vainly and feebly to dig some rule of life from her smiles alone, to read a sermon into her happy hours of high summer sunshine. Beauty was his dream; he possessed natural taste, and had cultivated the same without judgment. His intricate disposition and extreme sensitiveness frightened him away from much effort at self-expression; yet not a few trifling scraps and shreds of lyric poetry had fallen from his pen in high moments. These, when the mood changed, he read again, and found dead, and usually destroyed. He was more easily discouraged than a child who sets out to tell its parent a story, and is all silence and shamefaced blushes at the first whisper of laughter or semblance of a smile. The works of poets dazed him, disheartened him, and secret ambitions toward performance grew dimmer with every book he laid his hands on. Ambition to create began to die; the dream scenery of his ill-controlled mental life more and more seldom took shape of words on paper; and there came a time when thought grew wholly wordless for him; a mere personal pleasure, selfish, useless, unsubstantial as the glimmer of mirage over desert sands.

Into this futile life came Chris, like a breath of sweet air from off the deep sea. She lifted him clean out of his subjective existence, awoke a healthy, natural love, built on the ordinary emotions of humanity, galvanised self-respect and ambition into some activity, and presently inspired a pluck strong enough to propose marriage. That was two years ago; and the girl still loved this weakly soul with all her heart, found his language unlike that of any other man she had seen or heard, and even took some slight softening edge of culture into herself from him. Her common sense was absolutely powerless to probe even the crust of Clement’s nature; but she was satisfied that his poetry must be a thing as marketable as that in printed books. Indeed, in an elated moment he had assured her that it was so. During the earlier stages of their attachment, she pestered him to write and sell his verses and make money, that their happiness might be hastened; while he, on the first budding of his love, and with the splendid assurance of its return, had promised all manner of things, and indeed undertaken to make poems that should be sent by post to the far-away place where they printed unknown poets, and paid them. Chris believed in Clement as a matter of course. His honey must at least be worth more to the world than that of his bees. Over her future husband she began at once to exercise the control of mistress and mother; and she loved him more dearly after they had been engaged a year than at the beginning of the contract. By that time she knew his disposition, and instead of displaying frantic impatience at it, as might have been predicted, her tolerance was extreme. She bore with Clem because she loved him with the full love proper to such a nature as her own; and, though she presently found herself powerless to modify his character in any practical degree, his gloomy and uneven mind never lessened the sturdy optimism of Chris herself, or her sure confidence that the future would unite them. Through her protracted engagement Mrs. Blanchard’s daughter maintained a lively and sanguine cheerfulness. But seldom was it that she lost patience with the dreamer. Then her rare, indignant outbursts of commonplace and common sense, like a thunderstorm, sweetened the stagnant air of Clement’s thoughts and awoke new, wholesome currents in his mind.

As a rule, on the occasion of their frequent country walks, Clem and Chris found personal problems and private interests sufficient for all conversation, but it happened that upon a Sunday in mid-December, as they passed through the valley of the Teign, where the two main streams of that river mingle at the foothills of the Moor, the subject of Will and Phoebe for a time at least filled their thoughts. The hour was clear and bright, yet somewhat cheerless. The sun had already set, from the standpoint of all life in the valley, and darkness, hastening out of the east, merged the traceries of a million naked boughs into a thickening network of misty grey. The river beneath these woods churned in winter flood, while clear against its raving one robin sang little tinkling litanies from the branch of an alder.

Chris stood upon Lee Bridge at the waters’ meeting and threw scraps of wood into the river; Clem sat upon the parapet, smoked his pipe, and noted with a lingering delight the play of his sweetheart’s lips as her fingers strained to snap a tough twig. Then the girl spoke, continuing a conversation already entered upon.

“Phoebe Lyddon’s that weak in will. How far’s such as her gwaine in life without some person else to lean upon?”

“If the ivy cannot find a tree it creeps along the ground, Chrissy.”

“Ess, it do; or else falls headlong awver the first bank it comes to. Phoebe’s so helpless a maiden as ever made a picksher. I mind her at school in the days when we was childer together. Purty as them china figures you might buy off Cheap Jack, an’ just so tender. She’d come up to dinky gals no bigger ’n herself an’ pull out her li’l handkercher an’ ax ’em to be so kind as to blaw her nose for her! Now Will’s gone, Lard knaws wheer she’ll drift to.”

“To John Grimbal. Any man could see that. Her father’s set on it.”

“Why don’t Will write to her and keep her heart up and give her a little news? ’Twould be meat an’ drink to her. Doan’t matter ’bout mother an’ me. We’ll take your word for it that Will wants to keep his ways secret. But a sweetheart—’tis so differ’nt. I wouldn’t stand it!”

“I know right well you wouldn’t. Will has his own way. We won’t criticise him. But there’s a masterful man in the running—a prosperous, loud-voiced, bull-necked bully of a man, and one not accustomed to take ’no’ for his answer. I’m afraid of John Grimbal in this matter. I’ve gone so far as to warn Will, but he writes back that he knows Phoebe.”

“Jan Grimbal’s a very differ’nt fashion of man to his brother; that I saw in a moment when they bided with us for a week, till the ’Three Crowns’ could take ’em in. I hate Jan—hate him cruel; but I like Martin. He puts me in mind o’ you, Clem, wi’ his nice way of speech and tender quickness for women. But it’s Phoebe we’m speaking of. I think you should write stern to Will an’ frighten him. It ban’t fair fightin’, that poor, dear Phoebe ’gainst the will o’ two strong men.”

“Well, she’s had paltry food for a lover since he went away. He’s got certain ideas, and she’ll hear direct when—but there, I must shut my mouth, for I swore by fantastic oaths to say nothing.”

“He ought to write, whether or no. You tell Will that Jan Grimbal be about building a braave plaace up under Whiddon, and is looking for a wife at Monks Barton morning, noon, an’ evening. That’s like to waken him. An’ tell him the miller’s on t’other side, and clacking Jan Grimbal into Phoebe’s ear steadier than the noise of his awn water-wheel.”

“And she will grow weak, mark me. She sees that red-brick place rising out of the bare boughs, higher and higher, and knows that from floor to attics all may be hers if she likes to say the word. She hears great talk of drawing-rooms, and pictures, and pianos, and greenhouses full of rare flowers, and all the rest—why, just think of it!”

“Ban’t many gals as could stand ’gainst a piano, I daresay.”

“I only know one—mine.”

Chris looked at him curiously.

“You ’m right. An’ that, for some queer reason, puts me in mind of the other wan, Martin Grimbal. He was very pleasant to me.”

“He’s too late, thank God!”

“Ess, fay! An’ if he’d comed afore ’e, Clem, he’d been tu early. Theer’s awnly wan man in the gert world for me.”

“My gypsy!”

“But I didn’t mean that. He wouldn’t look at me, not even if I was a free woman. ’T was of you I thought when I talked to Mr. Grimbal. He’m well-to-do, and be seekin’ a house in the higher quarter under Middledown. You an’ him have the same fancy for the auld stones. So you might grow into friends—eh, Clem? Couldn’t it so fall out? He might serve to help—eh? You ’m two-and-thirty year auld next February, an’ it do look as though they silly bees ban’t gwaine to put money enough in the bank to spell a weddin’ for us this thirty year to come. Theer’s awnly your aunt, Widow Coomstock, as you can look to for a penny, and that tu doubtful to count on.”

“Don’t name her, Chris. Good Lord! poor drunken old thing, with that crowd of hungry relations waiting like vultures round a dying camel! Never think of her. Money she has, but I sha’n’t see the colour of it, and I don’t want to.”

“Well, let that bide. Martin Grimbal’s the man in my thought.”

“What can I do there?”

“Doan’t knaw, ’zactly; but things might fall out if he got to like you, being a bookish sort of man. Anyway, he’s very willing to be friends, for that he told me. Doan’t bear yourself like Lucifer afore him; but take the first chance to let him knaw your fortune’s in need of mendin’.”

“You say that! D’ you think self-respect is dead in me?” he asked, half angry.

There was no visible life about them, so she put her arms round him.

“I ax for love of ’e, dearie, an’ for want of ’e. Do ’e think waitin’ ’s sweeter for me than for you?”

Then he calmed down again, sighed, returned the caress, touched her, and stroked her breast and shoulder with sudden earthly light in his great eyes.

“It ’s hard to wait.”

“That’s why I say doan’t lose chances that may mean a weddin’ for us, Clem. Theer ’s so much hid in ’e, if awnly the way to bring it out could be found.”

“A mine that won’t pay working,” he said bitterly, the passion fading out of eyes and voice. “I know there ’s something hidden; I feel there ’s a twist of brain that ought to rise above keeping bees and take me higher than honey-combs. Yet look at hard truth. The clods round me get enough by their sweat to keep wives and feed children. I’m only a penniless, backboneless, hand-to-mouth wretch, living on the work of laborious insects.”

“If it ban’t your awn fault, then whose be it, Clem?”

“The fault of Chance—to pack my build of brains into the skull of a pauper. This poor, unfinished abortion of a head-piece of mine only dreams dreams that it cannot even set on paper for others to see.”

“You’ve given up trying whether it can or not, seemin’ly. I never hear tell of no verses now.”

“What ’s the good? But only last night, so it happens, I had a sort of a wild feeling to get something out of myself, and I scribbled for hours and hours and found a little morsel of a rhyme.”

“Will ’e read it to me?”

He showed reluctance, but presently dragged a scrap of paper out of his, pocket. Not a small source of trouble was his sweetheart’s criticism of his verses.

“It was the common sight of a pair of lovers walking tongue-tied, you know. I call it ‘A Devon Courting.’”

He read the trifle slowly, with that grand, rolling sea-beat of an accent that Elizabeth once loved to hear on the lips of Raleigh and Drake.

“Birds gived awver singin’,
Flittermice was wingin’,
Mists lay on the meadows—
A purty sight to see.
Down-long in the dimpsy, the dimpsy, the dimpsy,
Down-long in the dimpsy
Theer went a maid wi’ me.

“Five gude mile o’ walkin’,
Not wan word o’ talkin’,
Then I axed a question
And put the same to she.
Up-long in the owl-light, the owl-light, the owl-light,
Up-long in the owl-light,
Theer corned my maid wi’ me.”

“But I wonder you write the common words, Clem—you who be so much tu clever to use ’em.”

“The words are well enough. They were not common once.”

“Well, you knaw best. Could ’e sell such a li’l auld funny thing as that for money?”

He shook his head.

“No; it was only the toil of making it seemed good. It is worthless.”

“An’ to think how long it took ’e! If you’d awnly put the time into big-fashioned verses full of the high words you’ve got. But you knaw best. Did ’e hear anything of them rhymes ’bout the auld days you sent to Lunnon?”

“They sent them back again. I told you ’t was wasting three stamps. It ’s not for me, I know it. The world is full of dumb singers. Maybe I haven’t got even a pinch of the fire that must break through and show its flame, no matter what mountains the earth tumbles on it. God knows I burn hot enough sometimes with great thoughts and wild longings for love and for sweeter life and for you; but my fires—whether they are soul-fires or body-fires—only burn my heart out.”

She sighed and squeezed his hand, understanding little enough of what he said.

“We must be patient. ’T is a solid thing, patience. I’m puttin’ by pence; but it ’s so plaguy little a gal can earn, best o’ times and with the best will.”

“If I could only write the things I think! But they vanish before pen and paper and the need of words, as the mists of the night vanish before the hard, searching sun. I am ignorant of how to use words; and those in the world who might help me will never know of me. As for those around about, they reckon me three parts fool, with just a little gift of re-writing names over their dirty shop-fronts.”

“Yet it ’s money. What did ’e get for that butivul fox wi’ the goose in his mouth you painted ’pon Mr. Lamacraft’s sign to Sticklepath?”

“Ten shillings.”

“That’s solid money.”

“It isn’t now. I bought a book with it—a book of lies.”

Chris was going to speak, but changed her mind and sighed instead.

“Well, as our affairs be speeding so poorly, we’d best to do some gude deed an’ look after this other coil. You must let Will knaw what ’s doin’ by letter this very night. ’T is awnly fair, you being set in trust for him.”

“Strange, these Grimbal brothers,” mused Clement, as the lovers proceeded in the direction of Chagford. “They come home with everything on God’s earth that men might desire to win happiness, and, by the look of it, each marks his home-coming by falling in love with one he can’t have.”

“Shaws the fairness of things, Clem; how the poor may chance to have what the rich caan’t buy; so all look to stand equal.”

“Fairness, you call it? The damned, cynical irony of this whole passion-driven puppet-show—that’s what it shows! The man who is loved cannot marry the woman he loves lest they both starve; the man who can give a woman half the world is loathed for his pains. Not that he ’s to be pitied like the pauper, for if you can’t buy love you can buy women, and the wise ones know how to manufacture a very lasting substitute for the real thing.”

“You talk that black and bitter as though you was deep-read in all the wickedness of the world,” said Chris; “yet I knaw no man can say sweeter things than you sometimes.”

“Talk! It ’s all talk with me—all snarling and railing and whining at hard facts, like a viper wasting its venom on steel. I’m sick of myself—weary of the old, stale round of my thoughts. Where can I wash and be clean? Chrissy, for God’s sake, tell me.”

“Put your hope in the Spring,” she said, “an’ be busy for Will.” In reality, with the approach of Christmas, affairs between Phoebe and the elder Grimbal had reached a point far in advance of that which Clement and Chris were concerned with. For more than three months, and under a steadily increasing weight of opposition, Miller Lyddon’s daughter fought without shadow of yielding. Then came a time when the calm but determined iteration of her father’s desires and the sledge-hammer love-making of John Grimbal began to leave an impression. Even then her love for Will was bright and strong, but her sense of helplessness fretted her nerves and temper, and her sweetheart’s laconic messages, through the medium of another man, were sorry comfort in this hour of tribulation. With some reason she felt slighted. Neither considering Will’s peculiarities, nor suspecting that his silence was only, the result of a whim or project, she began to resent it. Then John Grimbal caught her in a dangerous mood. Once she wavered, and he had the wisdom to leave her at the moment of victory. But on the next occasion of their meeting, he took good care to keep the advantage he had gained. Conscious of his own honest and generous intentions, Grimbal went on his way. The subtler manifestations of Phoebe’s real attitude towards him escaped his observation; her reluctance he set down as resulting from the dying shadow of affection for Will Blanchard. That she would be very happy and proud and prosperous in the position of his wife, the lover was absolutely assured. He pursued her with the greater determination, in that he believed he was saving her from herself. What were some few months of vague uncertainty and girlish tears compared with a lifetime of prosperity and solid happiness? John Grimbal made Phoebe handsome presents of pretty and costly things after the first great victory. He pushed his advantage with tremendous vigour. His great face seemed reflected in Phoebe’s eyes when she slept as when she woke; his voice was never out of her ears. Weary, hopeless, worn out, she prayed sometimes for strength of purpose. But it was a trait denied to her character and not to be bestowed at a breath. Her stability of defence, even as it stood, was remarkable and beyond expectation. Then the sure climax rolled in upon poor Phoebe. Twice she sought Clement Hicks with purpose to send an urgent message; on each occasion accident prevented a meeting; her father was always smiling and droning his desires into her ear; John Grimbal haunted her. His good-nature and kindness were hard to bear; his patience made her frantic. So the investment drew to its conclusion and the barriers crumbled, for the forces besieged were too weak and worn to restore them; while a last circumstance brought victory to the stronger and proclaimed the final overthrow.

This culmination resulted from a visit to the spiritual head of Phoebe’s dwelling-place. The Rev. James Shorto-Champernowne, Vicar of Chagford, made an appointment to discuss the position with Mr. Lyddon and his daughter. A sportsman of the old type, and a cleric of rare reputation for good sense and fairness to high and low, was Mr. Shorto-Champernowne, but it happened that his more tender emotions had been buried with a young wife these forty years, and children he had none. Nevertheless, taking the standpoint of parental discipline, he held Phoebe’s alleged engagement a vain thing, not to be considered seriously. Moreover, he knew of Will’s lapses in the past; and that was fatal.

“My child, have little doubt that both religion and duty point in one direction and with no faltering hands,” he said, in his stately way. “Communicate with the young man, inform him that conversation with myself has taken place; then he can hardly maintain an attitude of doubt, either to the exalted convictions that have led to your decision, or to the propriety of it. And, further, do not omit an opportunity of well-doing, but conclude your letter with a word of counsel. Pray him to seek a Guide to his future life, the only Guide able to lead him aright. I mean his Mother Church. No man who turns his back upon her can be either virtuous or happy. I mourned his defection from our choir some years ago. You see I forget nobody. My eyes are everywhere, as they ought to be. Would that he could be whipped back to the House of God—with scorpions, if necessary! There is a cowardice, a lack of sportsmanlike feeling, if I may so express it, in these fallings away from the Church of our fathers. It denotes a failing of intellect amid the centres of human activity. There is a blight of unbelief abroad—a nebulous, pestilential rationalism. Acquaint him with these facts; they may serve to re-establish one whose temperament must be regarded as abnormal in the light of his great eccentricity of action. Now farewell, and God be with you.”

The rotund, grey-whiskered clergyman waved his hand; Miller Lyddon and his daughter left the vicarage; while both heard, as it seemed, his studied phrases and sonorous voice rolling after them all the way home. But poor Phoebe felt that the main issues as to conscience were now only too clear; her last anchor was wrenched from its hold, and that night, through a mist of unhappy tears, she succumbed, promised to marry John Grimbal and be queen of the red castle now rising under Cranbrook’s distant heights.

That we have dealt too scantily with her tragic experiences may be suspected; but the sequel will serve to show how these circumstances demand no greater elaboration than has been accorded to them.