In the soft earth they laid him, “the little child whose heart had fallen asleep,” and from piling of a miniature mound, from a small brown tumulus, now quite hid under primroses, violets, and the white anemones of the woods, Will Blanchard and his mother slowly returned to Newtake. He wore his black coat; she was also dressed in black; the solitary mourning coach dragged slowly up the hill to the Moor, and elsewhere another like it conveyed Mr. Lyddon homeward.

Neither mother nor son had any heart to speak. The man’s soul was up in arms; he had rebelled against his life, and since the death of his boy, while Phoebe remained inert in her desolation and languished under a mental and bodily paralysis wherein she had starved to death but for those about her, he, on the contrary, found muscle and mind clamouring for heroic movement. He was feverishly busy upon the farm, and ranged in thought with a savage activity among the great concerns of men. His ill-regulated mind, smarting under the blows of Chance, whirled from that past transient wave of superstitious emotion into an opposite extreme. Now he was ashamed of his weakness, and suffered convictions proper to the narrowness of an immature intellect to overwhelm him. He assured himself that his tribulations were not compatible with the existence of a Supreme Being. Like poor humanity the wide world over, his judgment became vitiated, his views distorted under the stroke of personal sorrow, and, beneath the pressure of that gigantic egotism which ever palsies the mind of man at sudden loss of what he holds dearest upon earth, poor Blanchard cried in his heart there was no God.

Here we are faced with a curious parallel, offered within the limits of this narrative. As the old labourer, Blee, had arrived at the same conclusion, then modified it and returned to a creed in the light of subsequent events, so now Will had found himself, on the evening of his child’s funeral, with fresh interests aroused and recent convictions shaken. An incipient negation of Deity, built upon the trumpery basis of his personal misfortunes, was almost shattered within the week that saw its first existence. A mystery developed in his path, and startling incidents awoke a new train of credulity akin to that already manifested over the ancient cross. The man’s uneven mind was tossed from one extreme of opinion to the other, and that element of superstition, from which no untutored intellect in the lap of Nature is free, now found fresh food and put forth a strong root within him.

Returning home, Will approached Phoebe with a purpose to detail the sad, short scene in Chagford churchyard, but his voice rendered her hysterical, so he left her with his mother, put on his working clothes, and wandered out into the farmyard. Presently he found himself idly regarding a new gate-post: that which Martin Grimbal formerly brought and left hard by the farm. Ted Chown had occupied himself in erecting it during the morning.

The spectacle reminded Will of another, and he lifted his eyes to the cross on the undulation spread before him. As he did so some object appeared to flutter out of sight not far above it, among the rocks and loose ‘clatters’ beneath the summit of the tor. This incident did not hold Will’s mind, but, prompted to motion, restless, and in the power of dark thoughts, he wandered up the Moor, tramped through the heather, and unwittingly passed within a yard of the monument he had raised upon the hill. He stood a moment and looked at the cross, then cursed and spat upon it. The action spoke definitely of a mental chaos unexampled in one who, until that time, had never lacked abundant self-respect. His deed done, it struck Will Blanchard like a blow; he marvelled bitterly at himself, he knew such an act was pitiful, and remembered that the brain responsible for it was his own. Then he clenched his hands and turned away, and stood and stared out over the world.

A wild, south-west wind blew, and fitful rain-storms sped separately across the waste. Over the horizon clouds massed darkly, and the wildernesses spread beneath them were of an inflamed purple. The seat of the sun was heavily obscured at this moment, and the highest illumination cast from sky to earth broke from the north. The effect thus imparted to the scene, though in reality no more than usual, affected the mind as unnatural, and even sinister in its operation of unwonted chiaro-oscuro. Presently the sullen clearness of the distance was swept and softened by a storm. Another, falling some miles nearer, became superimposed upon it. Immediately the darkness of the horizon lifted and light generally increased, though every outline of the hills themselves vanished under falling rain. The turmoil of the clouds proceeded, and after another squall had passed there followed an aerial battle amid towers and pinnacles and tottering precipices of sheer gloom. The centre of illumination wheeled swiftly round to the sun as the storm travelled north, then a few huge silver spokes of wan sunshine turned irregularly upon the stone-strewn desert.

Will watched this elemental unrest, and it served to soothe that greater storm of sorrows and self-condemnation then raging within him. His nature found consolation here, the cool hand of the Mother touched his forehead as she passed in her robe of rain, and for the first time since childhood the man hid his face and wept.

Presently he moved forward again, walked to the valleys and wandered towards southern Teign, unconsciously calmed by his own random movements and the river’s song. Anon, he entered the lands of Metherill, and soon afterwards, without deliberate intention, moved through that Damnonian village which lies there. A moment later and he stood in the hut-circle where he himself had been born. Its double stone courses spread around him, hiding the burrows of the rabbits; and sprung from between two granite blocks, brave in spring verdure, with the rain twinkling in little nests of flower buds as yet invisible, there rose a hawthorn. Within the stones a ewe stood and suckled its young, but there was no other sign of life. Then Blanchard, sitting here to rest and turning his eyes whither he had come, again noticed some sudden movement, but, looking intently at the spot, he saw nothing and returned to his own thoughts. Sitting motionless Will retraced the brief course of his career through long hours of thought; and though his spirit bubbled to white heat more than once during the survey, yet subdued currents of sense wound amid his later reflections. Crushed for a moment under the heavy load of life and its lessons, he presented a picture familiar enough, desirable enough, necessary enough to all humanity, yet pathetic as exemplified in the young and unintelligent and hopeful. It was the picture of the dawn of patience—a patience sprung from no religious inspiration, but representing Will’s tacit acknowledgment of defeat in his earlier battles with the world. The emotion did not banish his present rebellion against Fate and evil fortune undeserved; but it caused him to look upon life from a man’s standpoint rather than a child’s, and did him a priceless service by shaking to their foundations his self-confidence and self-esteem. Selfish at least he was not from a masculine standard, and now his thoughts returned to Phoebe in her misery, and he rose and retraced his steps with a purpose to comfort her if he could.

The day began to draw in. Unshed rains massed on the high tors, but towards the west one great band of primrose sky rolled out above the vanished sun and lighted a million little amber lamps in the hanging crystals of the rain. They twinkled on thorns and briars, on the grass, the silver crosiers of uncurling ferns, and all the rusty-red young heather.

Then it was that rising from his meditations and turning homeward, the man distinctly heard himself called from some distance. A voice repeated his name twice—in clear tones that might have belonged to a boy or a woman.

“Will! Will!”

Turning sharply upon a challenge thus ringing through absolute loneliness and silence, Blanchard endeavoured, without success, to ascertain from whence the summons came. He thought of his mother, then of his wife, yet neither was visible, and nobody appeared. Only the old time village spread about him with its hoary granite peering from under caps of heather and furze, ivy and upspringing thorn. And each stock and stone seemed listening with him for the repetition of a voice. The sheep had moved elsewhere, and he stood companionless in that theatre of vanished life. Trackways and circles wound grey around him, and the spring vegetation above which they rose all swam into one dim shade, yet moved with shadows under oncoming darkness. Attributing the voice to his own unsettled spirit, Blanchard proceeded upon his road to where the skeleton of a dead horse stared through the gloaming beside a quaking bog. Its bones were scattered by ravens, and Will used the bleached skull as a stepping stone. Presently he thought of the flame-tongues that here were wont to dance through warm summer nights. This memory recalled his own nickname in Chagford—“Jack-o’-Lantern”—and, for the first time in his life, he began to appreciate its significance. Then, being a hundred yards from his starting-place in the hut-circle, he heard the hidden voice again. Clear and low, it stole over the intervening wilderness, and between two utterances was an interval of some seconds.

“Will! Will!”

For one instant the crepitation of fear passed over Blanchard’s scalp and skin. He made an involuntary stride away from the voice; then he shook himself free of all alarm, and, not desirous to lose more self-respect that day, turned resolutely and shouted back,—

“I hear ’e. What’s the business? I be comin’ to ’e if you’ll bide wheer you be.”

That some eyes were watching him out of the gathering darkness he did not doubt, and soon pushing back, he stood once more in the ruined citadel of old stones, mounted one, steadied himself by a young ash that rose beside it, and raised his voice again,—

“Now, then! I be here. What’s to do? Who’s callin’ me?”

An answer came, but of a sort widely different from what he expected. There arose, within twenty yards of him, a sound that might have been the cry of a child or the scream of a trapped animal. Assuming it to be the latter, Will again hesitated. Often enough he had laughed at the folk-tales of witch hares as among the most fantastic fables of the old; yet at this present moment mystic legends won point from the circumstances in which he found himself. He hurried forward to the edge of a circle from which the sound proceeded. Then, looking before him, he started violently, sank to his knees behind a rock, and so remained, glaring into the ring of stones.

In less than half an hour Blanchard, with his coat wrapped round some object that he carried, returned to Newtake and summoned assistance with a loud voice.

Presently his wife and mother entered the kitchen, whereupon Will discovered his burden and revealed a young child. Phoebe fainted dead away at sight of it, and while her husband looked to her Mrs. Blanchard tended the baby, which was hungry but by no means alarmed. As for Will, his altered voice and most unusual excitement of manner indicated something of the shock he had received. Having described the voice which called him, he proceeded after this fashion to detail what followed:

“I looked in the very hut-circle I was born, an’ I shivered all over, for I thought ’twas the li’l ghost of our wee bwoy—by God, I did! It sat theer all alone, an’ I stared an’ froze while I stared. Then it hollered like a gude un, an’ stretched out its arms, an’ I seed ’twas livin’ an’ never thought how it comed theer. He ’in somethin’ smaller than our purty darling, yet like him in a way, onless I’m forgetting.”

“’Tis like,” said Damaris, dandling the child and making it happy. “’Tis a li’l bwoy, two year old or more, I should guess. It keeps crying ’Mam, mam,’ for its mother. God forgive the woman.”

“A gypsy’s baby, I reckon,” said Phoebe languidly.

“I doan’t think it,” answered her husband; “I’m most feared to guess what ’tis. Wan thing’s sure; I was called loud an’ clear or I’d never have turned back; an’ yet, second time I was called, my flesh crept.”

“The little flannels an’ frock be thick an’ gude, but they doan’t shaw nought.”

“The thing’s most as easy to think a miracle as not. He looked up in my eyes as I brought un away, an’ after he’d got used to me he was quiet as a mouse an’ snuggled to me.”

“They’d have said ’twas a fairy changeling in my young days,” mused Mrs. Blanchard, “but us knaws better now. ’Tis a li’l gypsy, I’ll warn ’e, an’ some wicked mother’s dropped un under your nose to ease her conscience.”

“What will you do? Take un to the poorhouse?” asked Phoebe.

“‘Poorhouse’! Never! This be mine, tu. Mine! I was called to it, weern’t I? By a human voice or another, God knaws. Theer’s more to this than us can see.”

His women regarded him with blank amazement, and he showed considerable impatience tinder their eyes. It was clear he desired that they should dwell on no purely materialistic or natural explanation of the incident.

“Baan’t a gypsy baaby,” he said; “’tis awnly the legs an’ arms of un as be brown. His body’s as white as curds, an’ his hair’s no darker than our awn Willy’s was.”

“If it ban’t a gypsy’s, whose be it?” said Phoebe, turning to the infant for the first time.

“Mine now,” answered Will stoutly. “’Twas sent an’ give into my awn hand by one what knawed who ’twas they called. My heart warmed to un as he lay in my arms, an’ he’m mine hencefarrard.”

“What do ’e say, Phoebe?” asked Mrs. Blanchard, somewhat apprehensively. She knew full well how any such project must have struck her if placed in the bereaved mother’s position. Phoebe, however, made no immediate answer. Her sorrowful eyes were fixed on the child, now sitting happily on the elder woman’s lap.

“A nice li’l thing, wi’ a wunnerful curly head—eh, Phoebe? Seems more ’n chance to me, comin’ as it have on this night-black day. An’ like our li’l angel, tu, in a way?” asked Will.

“Like him—in a way, but more like you,” she answered; “more like you than your awn was—terrible straange that—the living daps o’ Will! Ban’t it?”

Damaris regarded her son and then the child.

“He be like—very,” she admitted. “I see him strong. An’ to think he found the bwoy ’pon that identical spot wheer he fust drawed breath himself!”

“’Tis a thing of hidden meaning,” declared Will. “An’ he looked at me kindly fust he seed me; ’twas awnly hunger made un shout—not no fear o’ me. My heart warmed to un as I told ’e. An’ to come this day!”

Phoebe had taken the child, and was looking over its body in a half-dazed fashion for the baby marks she knew. Silently she completed the survey, but there was neither caress in her fingers nor softness in her eyes. Presently she put the child back on Mrs. Blanchard’s lap and spoke, still regarding it with a sort of dull, almost vindictive astonishment.

“Terrible coorious! Ban’t no child as ever I seed or heard tell of; an’ nothin’ of my dead lamb ’bout it, now I scans closer. But so like to Will! God! I can see un lookin’ out o’ its baaby eyes!”

Ripe hay swelled in many a silver-russet billow, all brightened by the warm red of sorrel under sunshine. When the wind blew, ripples raced over the bending grasses, and from their midst shone out mauve scabious and flashed occasional poppies. The hot July air trembled agleam with shining insects, and drowsily over the hayfield, punctuated by stridulation of innumerable grasshoppers, there throbbed one sustained murmur, like the remote and mellow music of wood and strings. A lark still sang, and the swallows, whose full-fledged young thrust open beaks from the nests under Newtake eaves, skimmed and twittered above the grass lands, or sometimes dipped a purple wing in the still water where the irises grew.

Blanchard and young Ted Chown had set about their annual labour of saving the hay, and now a rhythmic breathing of two scythes and merry clink of whetstones against steel sounded afar on the sleepy summer air. The familiar music came to Phoebe’s ear where she sat at an open kitchen window of Newtake. Her custom was at times of hay harvest to assist in the drying of the grass, and few women handled a fork better; but there had recently reached the farm an infant girl, and the mother had plenty to do without seeking beyond her cradle.

Phoebe made no demur about receiving Will’s little foundling of the hut-circle. His heart’s desire was usually her amibition also, and though Timothy, as the child had been called, could boast no mother’s love, yet Phoebe proved a kind nurse, and only abated her attention upon the arrival of her own daughter. Then, as time softened the little mound in Chagford churchyard with young green, so before another baby did the mother’s bereavement soften, sink deeper into memory, revive at longer intervals to conjure tears. Her character, as has been indicated, admitted of no supreme sustained sorrow. Suffer she did, and fiery was her agony; but another child brought occupation and new love; while her husband, after the first sentimental outburst of affection over the infant he had found at Metherill, settled into an enduring regard for him, associated him, by some mental process impossible of explanation, with his own lost one, and took an interest, blended of many curious emotions, in the child.

Drying hay soon filled the air with a pleasant savour, and stretched out grey-green ribbons along the emerald of the shorn meadows. Chown snuffled and sweated and sneezed, for the pollen always gave him hay fever; his master daily worked like a giant from dawn till the owl-light, drank gallons of cider, and performed wonders with the scythe. A great hay crop gladdened the moormen, and Will, always intoxicated by a little fair fortune, talked much of his husbandry, already calculated the value of the aftermath, and reckoned what number of beasts he might feed next winter.

“’Most looks as if I’d got a special gift wi’ hay,” he said to his mother on one occasion. She had let her cottage to holiday folk, and was spending a month on the Moor.

Mrs. Blanchard surveyed the scene from under her sunbonnet and nodded.

“Spare no trouble, no trouble, an’ have it stacked come Saturday. Theer’ll be thunder an’ gert rains after this heat. Be the rushes ready for thatchin’ of it?”

“Not yet; but that’s not to say I’ve forgot.”

“I’ll cut some for ’e myself come the cool of the evenin’. An’ you can send Ted with the cart to gather ’em up.”

“No, no, mother. I’ll make time to-morrow.”

“’Twill be gude to me, an’ like auld days, when I was a li’l maid. You sharp the sickle an’ fetch the skeiner out, tu, for I was a quick hand at bindin’ ropes o’ rushes, an’ have made many a yard of ’em in my time.”

Then she withdrew from the tremendous sunshine, and Will, now handling a rake, proceeded with his task.

Two days later a rick began to rise majestically at the corner of Blanchard’s largest field, while round about it was gathered the human life of the farm. Phoebe, with her baby, sat on an old sheepskin rug in the shadow of the growing pile; little Tim rollicked unheeded with Ship in the sweet grass, and clamoured from time to time for milk from a glass bottle; Will stood up aloft and received the hay from Chown’s fork, while Mrs. Blanchard, busy with the “skeiner” stuck into the side of the rick, wound stout ropes of rushes for the thatching.

Then it was that Will, glancing out upon the Moor, observed a string of gypsy folk making slow progress towards Chagford. Among the various Romany cavalcades which thus passed Newtake in summer time this appeared not the least strange. Two ordinary caravans headed the procession. A man conducted each, a naked-footed child or two trotted beside them, and an elder boy led along three goats. The travelling homes were encumbered with osier-and cane-work, and following them came a little broken-down, open vehicle. This was drawn by two donkeys, harnessed tandem-fashion, and the chariot had been painted bright blue. A woman drove the concern, and in it appeared a knife-grinding machine and a basket of cackling poultry, while some tent-poles stuck out behind. Will laughed at this spectacle, and called his wife’s attention to it, whereon Phoebe and Damaris went as far as the gate of the hayfield to win a nearer view. The gypsies, however, had already passed, but Mrs. Blanchard found time to observe the sky-blue carriage and shake her head at it.

“What gwaines-on! Theer’s no master minds ’mongst them people nowadays,” she said. “Your faither wouldn’t have let his folk make a show of themselves like that.”

“They ’m mostly chicken stealers nowadays,” declared Will; “an’ so surly as dogs if you tell ’em to go ’bout theer business.”

“Not to none o’ your name—never,” declared his mother. “No gypsy’s gwaine to forget my husband in his son’s time. Many gude qualities have they got, chiefly along o’ living so much in the awpen air.”

“An’ gude appetites for the same cause! Go after Tim, wan of ’e. He’ve trotted down the road half a mile, an’ be runnin’ arter that blue concern as if’t was a circus. Theer! Blamed if that damned gal in the thing ban’t stoppin’ to let un catch up! Now he’m feared, an’ have turned tail an’ be coming back. ’Tis all right; Ship be wi’ un.”

Presently the greater of Will’s two ricks approached completion, and all the business of thatch and spar gads and rush ropes began. At his mother’s desire he wasted no time, and toiled on, long after his party had returned to Newtake; but with the dusk he made an end for that day, stood up, rested his back, and scanned the darkening scene before descending.

At eveningtide there had spread over the jagged western outlines of the Moor an orange-tawny sunset, whereon the solid masses of the hills burnt into hazy gold, all fairy-bright, unreal, unsubstantial as a cloud-island above them, whose solitary and striated shore shone purple through molten fire.

Detail vanished from the Moor; dim and dimensionless it spread to the transparent splendour of the horizon, and its eternal attributes of great vastness, great loneliness, great silence reigned together unfretted by particulars. Gathering gloom diminished the wide glory of the sky, and slowly robbed the pageant of its colour. Then rose each hill and undulation in a different shade of night, and every altitude mingled into the outlines of its neighbour. Nocturnal mists, taking grey substance against the darkness of the lower lands, wound along the rivers, and defined the depths and ridges of the valleys. Moving waters, laden with a last waning gleam, glided from beneath these vapoury exhalations, and even trifling rivulets, now invisible save for chance splashes of light, lacked not mystery as they moved from darkness into darkness with a song. Stars twinkled above the dewy sleep of the earth, and there brooded over all things a prodigious peace, broken only by batrachian croakings from afar.

These phenomena Will Blanchard observed; then yellow candle fires twinkled from the dark mass of the farmhouse, and he descended in splendid weariness and strode to supper and to bed.

Yet not much sleep awaited the farmer, for soon after midnight a gentle patter of small stones at his window awakened him. Leaping from his bed and looking into the darkness he saw a vague figure that raised its hand and beckoned without words. Fear for the hay was Will’s first emotion, but no indication of trouble appeared. Once he spoke, and as he did so the figure beckoned again, then approached the door. Blanchard went down to find a woman waiting for him, and her first whispered word made him start violently and drop the candle and matches that he carried. His ears were opened and he knew Chris without seeing her face.

“I be come back—back home-along, brother Will,” she said, very quietly. “I looked for mother to home, but found she weern’t theer. An’ I be sorry to the heart for all the sorrow I’ve brought ’e both. But it had to be. Strange thoughts an’ voices was in me when Clem went, an’ I had to hide myself or drown myself—so I went.”

“God’s gudeness! Lucky I be made o’ strong stuff, else I might have thought ’e a ghost an’ no less. Come in out the night, an’ I’ll light a candle. But speak soft. Us must break this very gentle to mother.”

“Say you’ll forgive me, will ’e? Can ’e do it? If you knawed half you’d say ‘yes.’ I’m grawed a auld, cold-hearted woman, wi’ a grey hair here an’ theer a’ready.”

“So’ve I got wan an’ another, tu, along o’ worse sorrow than yours. Leastways as bad as yourn. Forgive ’e? A thousand times, an’ thank Heaven you’m livin’! Wheer ever have ’e bided? An’ me an’ Grimbal searched the South Hams, an’ North, tu, inside out for ’e, an’ he put notices in the papers—dozens of ’em.”

“Along with the gypsy folk for more ’n three year now. ’Twas the movin’ an’ rovin’, and the opening my eyes on new things that saved me from gwaine daft. Sometimes us coined through Chagford, an’ then I’d shut my eyes tight an’ lie in the van, so’s not to see the things his eyes had seen—so’s not to knaw when us passed the cottage he lived in. But now I’ve got to feel I could come back again.”

“You might have writ to say how you was faring.”

“I didn’t dare. You’d bin sure to find me, an’ I didn’t want ’e to then. ’Tis awver an’ done, an’ ’twas for the best.”

“You’m a woman, an’ can say them silly words, an’ think ’em true in your heart, I s’pose. ‘For the best!’ I caan’t see much that happens for the best under my eyes. Will ’e have bite or sup?”

“No, nothin’. You get back to your bed. Us’ll talk in the marnin’. I’ll bide here. You an’ Phoebe be well, an’—an’ dear mother?”

“We’m well. You doan’t ax me after the fust cheel Phoebe had.”

“I knaw. I put some violets theer that very night. We were camped just above Chagford, not far from here.”

“Theer’s a li’l gal now, an’ a bwoy as I’ll tell’e about bimebye. A sheer miracle’t was that falled out the identical day I buried my Willy. No natural fashion of words can explain it. But that’ll keep. Now let me look at’e. Fuller in the body seemin’ly, an’ gypsy-brown, by God! So brown as me, every bit. Well, well, I caan’t say nothin’. I’m carried off my legs wi’ wonder, an’ joy, tu, for that matter. Next to Phoebe an’ mother I allus loved ’e best. Gimme a kiss. What a woman, to be sure! Like a thief in the night you went; same way you’ve comed back. Why couldn’t ’e wait till marnin’?”

“The childer—they grawed to love me that dear—also the men an’ women. They’ve been gude to me beyond power o’ words for faither’s sake. They knawed I was gwaine, an’ I left ’em asleep. ’T was how they found me when I runned away. I falled asleep from weariness on the Moor, an’ they woke me, an’ I thrawed in my lot with them from the day I left that pencil-written word for ’e on the window-ledge.”

“Me bein’ in the valley lookin’ for your drowned body the while! Women ’mazes me more the wiser I graw. Come this way, to the linhay. There’s a sweet bed o’ dry fern in the loft, and you must keep out o’ sight till mother’s told cunning. I’ll hit upon a way to break it to her so soon as she’s rose. An’ if I caan’t, Phoebe will. Come along quiet. An’ I be gwaine to lock ’e in, Chris, if’t is all the same to you. For why? Because you might fancy the van folks was callin’ to ’e, an’ grow hungry for the rovin’ life again.”

She made no objection, and asked one more question as they went to the building.

“How be Mrs. Hicks, my Clem’s mother?”

“Alive; that’s all. A poor auld bed-lier now; just fading away quiet. But weak in the head as a baaby. Mother sees her now an’ again. She never talks of nothin’ but snuff. ’T is the awnly brightness in her life. She’s forgot everythin’ ’bout the past, an’ if you went to see her, she’d hold out her hand an’ say, ’Got a little bit o’ snuff for a auld body, dearie? ’an’ that’s all.”

They talked a little longer, while Will shook down a cool bed of dry fern—not ill-suited to the sultry night; then Chris kissed him again, and he locked her in and returned to Phoebe.

Though the wanderer presently slept peacefully enough, there was little more repose that night for her brother or his wife. Phoebe herself became much affected by the tremendous news. Then they talked into the early dawn before any promising mode of presenting Chris to her mother occurred to them. At breakfast Will followed a suggestion of Phoebe’s, and sensibly lessened the shock of his announcement.

“A ’mazin’ wonnerful dream I had last night,” he began abruptly. “I thought I was roused long arter midnight by a gert knocking, an’ I went down house an’ found a woman at the door. ‘Who be you?’ I sez. ‘Why, I be Chris, brother Will,’ she speaks back, ‘Chris, come home-along to mother an’ you.’ Then I seed it was her sure enough, an’ she telled me all about herself, an’ how she’d dwelt wi’ gypsy people. Natural as life it weer, I assure ’e.”

This parable moved Mrs. Blanchard more strongly than Will expected. She dropped her piece of bread and dripping, grew pale, and regarded her son with frightened eyes. Then she spoke.

“Tell me true, Will; don’t ’e play with a mother ’bout a life-an’-death thing like her cheel. I heard voices in the night, an’ thought ’t was a dream—but—oh, bwoy, not Chris, not our awn Chris!—’t would ’most kill me for pure joy, I reckon.”

“Listen to me, mother, an’ eat your food. Us won’t have no waste here, as you knaw very well. I haven’t tawld ’e the end of the story. Chris, ’pearin’ to be back again, I thinks, ‘this will give mother palpitations, though ’t is quite a usual thing for a darter to come back to her mother,’ so I takes her away to the linhay for the night an’ locks her in; an’ if ’t was true, she might be theer now, an’ if it weer n’t—”

Damaris rose, and held the table as she did so, for her knees were weak under her.

“I be strong—strong to meet my awn darter. Gimme the key, quick—the key, Will—do ’e hear me, child?”

“I’ll come along with ’e.”

“No, I say. What! Ban’t I a young woman still? ’T was awnly essterday Chris corned in the world. You just bide with Phoebe, an’ do what I tell ’e.”

Will handed over the key at this order, and Mrs. Blanchard, grasping it without a word, passed unsteadily across the farmyard. She fumbled at the lock, and dropped the key once, but picked it up quickly before Will could reach her, then she unfastened the door and entered.

Jon Grimbal’s desires toward Blanchard lay dormant, and the usual interests of life filled his mind. The attitude he now assumed was one of sustained patience and observation; and it may best be described in words of his own employment.

Visiting Drewsteignton, about a month after the return of Chris Blanchard to her own, the man determined to extend his ride and return by devious ways. He passed, therefore, where the unique Devonian cromlech stands hard by Bradmere pool. A lane separates this granite antiquity from the lake below, and as John Grimbal rode between them, his head high enough to look over the hedge, he observed a ladder raised against the Spinsters’ Rock, as the cromlech is called, and a man with a tape-measure sitting on the cover stone.

It was the industrious Martin, home once again. After his difference with Blanchard, the antiquary left Devon for another tour in connection with his work, and had devoted the past six months to study of prehistoric remains in Guernsey, Herm, and other of the Channel Islands.

Before departing, he had finally regained his brother’s friendship, though the close fraternal amity of the past appeared unlikely to return between them. Now John recognised Martin, and his first impulse produced pleasure, while his second was one of irritation. He felt glad to see his brother; he experienced annoyance that Martin should thus return to Chagford and not call immediately at the Red House.

“Hullo! Home again! I suppose you forgot you had a brother?”

“John, by all that’s surprising! Forget? Was it probable? Have I so many flesh-and-blood friends to remember? I arrived yesterday and called on you this morning, only to find you were at Drewsteignton; so I came to verify some figures at the cromlech, hoping we might meet the sooner.”

He was beside his brother by this time, and they shook hands over the hedge.

“I’ll leave the ladder and walk by you and have a chat.”

“It’s too hot to ride at a walk. Come you here to Bradmere Pool. We can lie down in the shade by the water, and I’ll tether my horse for half an hour.”

Five minutes later the brothers sat under the shadow of oaks and beeches at the edge of a little tarn set in fine foliage.

“Pleasant to see you,” said Martin. “And looking younger I do think. It’s the open air. I’ll wager you don’t get slimmer in the waist-belt though.”

“Yes, I’m all right.”

“What’s the main interest of life for you now?”

John reflected before answering.

“Not quite sure. Depends on my mood. Just been buying a greyhound bitch at Drewsteignton. I’m going coursing presently. A kennel will amuse me. I spend most of my time with dogs. They never change. I turn to them naturally. But they overrate humanity.”

“Our interests are so different. Yet both belong to the fresh air and the wild places remote from towns. My book is nearly finished. I shall publish it in a year’s time, or even less.”

“Have you come back to stop?”

“Yes, for good and all now.”

“You have found no wife in your wanderings?”

“No, John. I shall never marry. That was a dark spot in my life, as it was in yours. We both broke our shins over that.”

“I broke nothing—but another man’s bones.”

He was silent for a moment, then proceeded abruptly on this theme.

“The old feeling is pretty well dead though. I look on and watch the man ruining himself; I see his wife getting hard-faced and thin, and I wonder what magic was in her, and am quite content. I wouldn’t kick him a yard quicker to the devil if I could. I watch him drift there.”

“Don’t talk like that, dear old chap. You ’re not the man you pretend to be, and pretend to think yourself. Don’t sour your nature so. Let the past lie and go into the world and end this lonely existence.”

“Why don’t you?”

“The circumstances are different. I am not a man for a wife. You are, if ever there was one.”

“I had him within a hair’s-breadth once,” resumed the other inconsequently. “Blanchard, I mean. There ’s a secret against him. You didn’t know that, but there is. Some black devilry for all I can tell. But I missed it. Perhaps if I knew it would quicken up my spirit and remind me of all the brute made me endure.”

“Yet you say the old feeling is dead!”

“So it is—starved. Hicks knew. He broke his neck an hour too soon. It was like a dream of a magnificent banquet I had some time ago. I woke with my mouth watering, just as the food was uncovered, and I felt so damned savage at being done out of the grub that I got up and went down-stairs and had half a pint of champagne and half a cold roast partridge! I watch Blanchard go down the hill—that’s all. If this knowledge had come to me when I was boiling, I should have used it to his utmost harm, of course. Now I sometimes doubt, even if I could hang the man, whether I should take the trouble to do it.”

“Get away from him and all thought of him.”

“I do. He never crosses my mind unless he crosses my eyes. I ride past Newtake occasionally, and see him sweating and slaving and fighting the Moor. Then I laugh, as you laugh at a child building sand castles against an oncoming tide. Poor fool!”

“If you pity, you might find it in your heart to forgive.”

“My attitude is assured. We will call it one of mere indifference. You made up that row over the gate-post when his first child died, didn’t you?”

“Yes, yes. We shall be friendly—we must be, if only for the sake of the memory of Chris. You and I are frank to-day. But you saw long ago what I tried to hide, so it is no news to you. You will understand. When Hicks died I thought perhaps after years—but that’s over now. She ’s gone.”

“Didn’t you know? She ’s back again.”

“Back! Good God!”

John laughed at his brother’s profound agitation.

“Like as not you’d see her if you went over Rushford Bridge. She ’s back with her mother. Queer devils, all of them; but I suppose you can have her for the asking now if you couldn’t before. Damnably like her brother she is. She passed me two days ago, and looked at me as if I was transparent, or a mere shadow hiding something else.”

A rush of feeling overwhelmed Martin before this tremendous news. He could not trust himself to speak. Then a great hope wrestled with him and conquered. In his own exaltation he desired to see all whom he loved equally lifted up towards happiness.

“I wish to Heaven you would open your eyes and raise them from your dogs and find a wife, John.”

“Ah! We all want the world to be a pretty fairy tale for our friends. You scent your own luck ahead, and wish me to be lucky too. I ought to thank you for that; but, instead, I’ll give you some advice. Don’t bother yourself with the welfare of others; to do that is to ruin your own peace of mind and court more trouble than your share. Every big-hearted man is infernally miserable—he can’t help it. The only philosopher’s stone is a stone heart; that is what the world ’s taught me.”

“Never! You ’re echoing somebody else, not yourself, I’ll swear. I know you better. We must see much of each other in the future. I shall buy a little trap that I may drive often to the Red House. And I should like to dedicate my book to you, if you would take it as a compliment.”

“No, no; give it to somebody who may be able to serve you. I’m a fool in such things and know no more about the old stones than the foxes and rabbits that burrow among them. Come, I must get home. I’m glad you have returned, though I hated you when you supported them against me; but then love of family ’s a mere ghost against love of women. Besides, how seldom it is that a man’s best friend is one of his own blood.”

They rose and departed. John trotted away through Sandypark, having first made Martin promise to sup with him that night, and the pedestrian proceeded by the nearest road to Rushford Bridge.

Chris he did not see, but it happened that Mr. Lyddon met him just outside Monks Barton, and though Martin desired no such thing at the time, nothing would please the miller but that his friend should return to the farm for some conversation.

“Home again, an’ come to glasses, tu! Well, they clear the sight, an’ we must all wear ’em sooner or late. ’T is a longful time since I seed ’e, to be sure.”

“All well, I hope?”

“Nothing to grumble at. Billy an’ me go down the hill as gradual an’ easy as any man ’s a right to expect. But he’s gettin’ so bald as a coot; an’ now the shape of his head comes to be knawed, theer ’s wonnerful bumps ’pon it. Then your brother’s all for sport an’ war. A Justice of the Peace they’ve made un, tu. He’s got his volunteer chaps to a smart pitch, theer’s no gainsaying. A gert man for wild diversions he is. Gwaine coursin’ wi’ long-dogs come winter, they tell me.”

“And how are Phoebe and her husband?”

“A little under the weather just now; but I’m watchin’ ’em unbeknawnst. Theer’s a glimmer of hope in the dark if you’ll believe it, for Will ackshally comed to me esster-night to ax my advice—my advice—on a matter of stock! What do ’e think of that?”

“He was fighting a losing battle in a manly sort of way it seemed to me when last I saw him.”

“So he was, and is. I give him eighteen month or thereabout—then’ll come the end of it.”

“The ‘end’! What end? You won’t let them starve? Your daughter and the little children?”

“You mind your awn business, Martin,” said Mr. Lyddon, with nods and winks. “No, they ban’t gwaine to starve, but my readin’ of Will’s carater has got to be worked out. Tribulation’s what he needs to sweeten him, same as winter sweetens sloes; an’ ’t is tribulation I mean him to have. If Phoebe’s self caan’t change me or hurry me ’t is odds you won’t. Theer’s a darter for ’e! My Phoebe. She’ll often put in a whole week along o’ me still. You mind this: if it’s grawn true an’ thrawn true from the plantin’, a darter’s love for a faither lasts longer ’n any mortal love at all as I can hear tell of. It don’t wear out wi’ marriage, neither, as I’ve found, thank God. Phoebe rises above auld age and the ugliness an’ weakness an’ bad temper of auld age. Even a poor, doddering ancient such as I shall be in a few years won’t weary her; she’ll look back’ards with butivul clear eyes, an’ won’t forget. She’ll see—not awnly a cracked, shrivelled auld man grizzling an’ grumbling in the chimbley corner, but what the man was wance—a faither, strong an’ lusty, as dandled her, an’ worked for, an’ loved her with all his heart in the days of his bygone manhood. Ess, my Phoebe’s all that; an’ she comes here wi’ the child; an’ it pleases me, for rightly onderstood, childern be a gert keeper-off of age.”

“I’m sure she’s a good daughter to you, Miller. And Will?”

“Doan’t you fret. We’ve worked it out in our minds—me an’ Billy; an’ if two auld blids like us can’t hatch a bit o’ wisdom, what brains is worth anything? We’m gwaine to purify the awdacious young chap ’so as by fire,’ in holy phrase.”

“You’re dealing with a curious temperament.”

“I’m dealing with a damned fule,” said Mr. Lyddon frankly; “but theer’s fules an’ fules, an’ this partickler wan’s grawed dear to me in some ways despite myself. ’T is Phoebe’s done it at bottom I s’pose. The man’s so full o’ life an’ hope. Enough energy in un for ten men; an’ enough folly for twenty. Yet he’ve a gude heart an’ never lied in’s life to my knawledge.”

“That’s to give him praise, and high praise. How’s his sister? I hear she’s returned after all.”

“Ess—naughty twoad of a gal—runned arter the gypsies! But she’m sobered now. Funny to think her mother, as seemed like a woman robbed of her right hand when Chris went, an’ beginned to graw into the sere onusual quick for a widow, took new life as soon as her gal comed back. Just shaws what strength lies in a darter, as I tell ’e.”

The old man’s garrulity gained upon him, and though Martin much desired to be gone, he had not the heart to hasten.

“A darter’s the thing an’—but’t is a secret yet—awnly you’ll see what you’ll see. Coourse Billy’s very well for gathered wisdom and high conversation ’bout the world to come; but he ban’t like a woman round the house, an’ for all his ripe larnin’ he’ll strike fire sometimes—mostly when I gives him a bad beating at ‘Oaks’ of a evenin’. Then he’m so acid as auld rhubarb, an’ dots off to his bed wi’out a ‘gude-night.’”

For another ten minutes Mr. Lyddon chattered, but at the end of that time Martin escaped and proceeded homewards. His head throbbed and his mind was much excited by the intelligence of the day. The yellow stubbles, the green meadows, the ploughed lands similarly spun before him and whirled up to meet the sky. As he re-entered the village a butcher’s cart nearly knocked him down. Hope rose in a glorious new sunrise—the hope that he had believed was set for ever. Then, passing that former home of Clement Hicks and his mother, did Grimbal feel great fear and misgiving. The recollection of Chris and her love for the dead man chilled him. He remembered his own love for Chris when he thought she must be dead. He told himself that he must hope nothing; he repeated to himself how fulfilment of his desire, now revived after long sleep, might still be as remote as when Chris Blanchard said him nay in the spring wastes under Newtake five years and more ago. His head dinned this upon his heart; but his heart would not believe and responded with a sanguine song of great promise.

At a spot in the woods some distance below Newtake, Martin Grimbal sat and waited, knowing she whom he sought must pass that way. He had called at the farm and been welcomed by Phoebe. Will was on the peat beds, and, asking after Chris, he learnt that she had gone into the valley to pick blackberries and dewberries, where they already began to ripen in the coombs.

Under aisles of woodland shadows he sat, where the river murmured down mossy stairs of granite in a deep dingle. Above him, the varying foliage of oak and ash and silver birch was already touched with autumn, and trembled into golden points where bosses of pristine granite, crowned with the rowan’s scarlet harvest, arose above their luxuriance. The mellow splendour of these forests extended to the river’s brink, along which towered noble masses of giant osmunda, capped by seed spears of tawny red. Here and there gilded lances splashed into the stream or dotted its still pools with scattered sequins of sunshine, where light winnowed through the dome of the leaves; and at one spot, on a wrinkled root that wound crookedly from the alder into the river, there glimmered a halcyon, like an opal on a miser’s bony finger. From above the tree-tops there sounded cynic bird-laughter, and gazing upwards Martin saw a magpie flaunt his black and white plumage across the valley; while at hand the more musical merriment of a woodpecker answered him.

Then a little child’s laugh came to his ear, rippling along with the note of the babbling water, and one moment later a small, sturdy boy appeared. A woman accompanied him. She had slipped a foot into the river, and thus awakened the amusement of her companion.

Chris steadied herself after the mishap, balanced her basket more carefully, then stooped down to pick some of the berries that had scattered from it on the bank. When she rose a man with a brown face and soft grey eyes gleaming through gold-rimmed spectacles appeared immediately before.

“Thank God I see you alive again. Thank God!” he said with intense feeling, as he took her hand and shook it warmly. “The best news that ever made my heart glad, Chris.”

She welcomed him, and he, looking into her eyes, saw new knowledge there, a shadow of sobriety, less of the old dance and sparkle. But he remembered the little tremulous updrawing of her lip when a smile was born, and her voice rang fuller and sweeter than any music he had ever heard since last she spoke to him. A smile of welcome she gave him, indeed, and a pressure of his hand that sent magic messages with it to the very core of him. He felt his blood leap and over his glasses came a dimness.

“I was gwaine to write first moment I heard ’e was home. An’ I wish I had, for I caan’t tell ’e what I feel. To think of ’e searchin’ the wide world for such a good-for-nought! I thank you for your generous gudeness, Martin. I’ll never forget it—never. But I wasn’t worth no such care.”

“Not worth it! It proved the greatest, bitterest grief of all my life—but one—that I couldn’t find you. We grew by cruel stages to think—to think you were dead. The agony of that for us! But, thank God, it was not so. All at least is well with you now?”

“All ban’t never well with men an’ women. But I’m more fortunate than I deserve to be, and can make myself of use. I’ve lived a score of years since we met. An I’ve comed back to find’t is a difficult world for those I love best, unfortunately.”

Thus, in somewhat disjointed fashion, Chris made answer.

“Sit a while and speak to me,” replied Martin. “The laddie can play about. Look at him marching along with that great branch of king fern over his shoulder!”

“’T is an elfin cheel some ways. Wonnerful eyes he’ve got. They burn me if I look at’em close,” said Chris. She regarded Timothy without sentiment and her eyes were bright and hard.

“I hope he will turn out well. Will spoke of him the other day. He is very fond of the child. It is singularly like him, too—a sort of little pocket edition of him.”

“So I’ve heard others say. Caan’t see it at all myself. Look at the eyes of un.”

“Will believes the boy has got very unusual intelligence and may go far.”

“May go so far as the workhouse,” she answered, with a laugh. Then, observing that her reply pained Martin, Chris snatched up small Tim as he passed by and pressed him to her breast and kissed him.

“You like him better than you think, Chris—poor little motherless thing.”

“Perhaps I do. I wonder if his mother ever looks hungry towards Newtake when she passes by?”

“Perhaps others took him and told the mother that he was dead.”

“She’s dead herself more like. Else the thing wouldn’t have falled out.”

There was a pause, then Martin talked of various matters. But he could not fight for long against the desire of his heart and presently plunged, as he had done five years before, into a proposal.

“He being gone—poor Clem—do you think—? Have you thought, I mean? Has it made a difference, Chris? ’T is so hard to put it into words without sounding brutal and callous. Only men are selfish when they love.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

A sudden inspiration prompted his reply. He said nothing for a moment, but with a hand that shook somewhat, drew forth his pocketbook, opened it, fumbled within, and then handed over to Chris the brown ruins of flowers long dead.

“You picked them,” he said slowly; “you picked them long ago and flung them away from you when you said ‘No’ to me—said it so kindly in the past. Take them in your hand again.”

“Dead bluebells,” she answered. “Ess, I can call home the time. To think you gathered them up!” She looked at him with something not unlike love in her eyes and fingered the flowers gently. “You’m a gude man, Martin —the husband for a gude lass. Best to find one if you can. Wish I could help’e.”

“Oh, Chris, there’s only one woman in the world for me. Could you—even now? Could you let me stand between you and the world? Could you, Chris? If you only knew what I cannot put into words. I’d try so hard to make you happy.”

“I knaw, I knaw. But theer’s no human life so long as the road to happiness, Martin. And yet—”

He took her hand and for a moment she did not resist him. Then little Tim’s voice chimed out merrily at the stream margin, and the music had instant effect upon Chris Blanchard.

She drew her hand from Martin and the next moment he saw his dead bluebells hurrying away and parting company for ever on the dancing water. Chris watched them until they vanished; then she turned and looked at him, to find that he grew very pale and agitated. Even his humility had hardly foreseen this decisive answer after the yielding attitude Chris first assumed when she suffered him to hold her hand. He looked into her face inquiring and frightened. The silence that followed was broken by continued laughter and shouting from Timothy. Then Martin tried to connect the child’s first merriment with the simultaneous change in the mood of the woman he worshipped, but failed to do so.

At that moment Chris spoke. She made utterance under the weight of great emotion and with evident desire to escape the necessity of a direct negative, while yet leaving her refusal of Martin’s offer implicit and distinct.

“I mind when a scatter of paper twinkled down this river just like them dead blossoms. Clem thrawed them, an’ they floated away to the sea, past daffadowndillies an’ budding lady-ferns an’ such-like. ’T was a li’l bit of poetry he’d made up to please me—and I, fule as I was, didn’t say the right thing when he axed me what I thought; so Clem tore the rhymes in pieces an’ sent them away. He said the river would onderstand. An’ the river onderstands why I dropped them dead blossoms in, tu. A wise, ancient stream, I doubt. An’ you ’m wise, tu; an’ can take my answer wi’out any more words, as will awnly make both our hearts ache.”

“Not even if I wait patiently? You couldn’t marry me, dear Chris? You couldn’t get to love me?”

“I couldn’t marry you. I’m a widow in heart for all time. But I thank God for the gude-will of such a man as you. I cherish it and ’t will be dear to me all my life. But I caan’t come to ’e, so doan’t ax it.”

“Yet you’re young to live for a memory, Chris.”

“Better ’n nothing. And listen; I’ll tell you this, if ’t will make my ‘No’ sound less hard to your ear. I loves you—I loves you better ’n any living man ’cept Will, an’ not less than I love even him. I wish I could bring ’e a spark of joy by marryin’ you, for you was allus very gude, an’ thought kindly of Clem when but few did. I’d marry you if ’t was awnly for that; yet it caan’t never be, along o’ many reasons. You must take that cold comfort, Martin.”

He sighed, then spoke.

“So be it, dear one. I shall never ask again. God knows what holds you back if you can even love me a little.”

“Ess, God knaws—everything.”

“I must not cry out against that. Yet it makes it all the harder. To think that you will dedicate all your beautiful life to a memory! it only makes my loss the greater, and shows the depths of you to me.”

She uttered a little scream and her cheek paled, and she put up her hands with the palms outward as though warding away his words.

“Doan’t ’e say things like that or give me any praise, for God’s sake. I caan’t bear it. I be weak, weak flesh an’ blood, weaker ’n water. If you could only see down in my heart, you’d be cured of your silly love for all time.”

He did not answer, but picked up her basket and proceeded with her out of the valley. Chris gave a hand to the child, and save for Tim’s prattle there was no speaking.

At length they reached Newtake, when Martin yielded up the basket and bade Chris “good-night.” He had already turned, when she called him back in a strange voice.

“Kiss the li’l bwoy, will ’e? I want ’e to. I’m that fond of un. An’ he ’peared to take to ’e; an’ he said ‘By-by’ twice to ’e, but you didn’t hear un.”

Then the man kissed Tim on a small, purple-stained mouth, and saw his eyes very lustrous with sleep, for the day was done.

Woman and child disappeared; the sacking nailed along the bottom of Newtake Gate to keep the young chicks in the farmyard rustled over the ground, and Martin, turning his face away, moved homewards.

But the veil was not lifted for him; he did not understand. A secret, transparent enough to any who regarded Chris Blanchard and her circumstances from a point without the theatre of action, still remained concealed from all who loved her.

Will Blanchard was of the sort who fight a losing battle,

“Still puffing in the dark at one poor coal,
Held on by hope till the last spark is out.”

But the extinction of his ambitions, the final failure of his enterprise happened somewhat sooner than Miller Lyddon had predicted. There dawned a year when, just as the worst of the winter was past and hope began to revive for another season, a crushing catastrophe terminated the struggle.

Mr. Blee it was who brought the ill news to Monks Barton, having first dropped it at Mrs. Blanchard’s cottage and announced it promiscuously about the village. Like a dog with a bone he licked the intelligence over and, by his delay in imparting the same, reduced his master to a very fever of irritation.

“Such a gashly thing! Of all fules! The last straw I do think. He’s got something to grumble at now, poor twoad. Your son-in-law; but now—theer—gormed if I knaw how to tell ’e!”

Alarmed at this prelude, with its dark hints of unutterable woe, Mr. Lyddon took off his spectacles in some agitation, and prayed to know the worst without any long-drawn introduction.

“I’ll come to it fast enough, I warn ’e. To think after years an’ years he didn’t knaw the duffer’nce ’twixt a bullock an’ a sheep! Well—well! Of coourse us knawed times was tight, but Jack-o’-Lantern be to the end of his dance now. ’T is all awver.”

“What’s the matter? Come to it, caan’t ’e?”

“No ill of the body—not to him or the fam’ly. An’ you must let me tell it out my awn way. Well, things bein’ same as they are, the bwoy caan’t hide it. Dammy! Theer’s patches in the coat of un now—neat sewed, I’ll grant ’e, but a patch is a patch; an’ when half a horse’s harness is odds an’ ends o’ rope, then you knaw wi’out tellin’ wheer a man be driving to. ’T is ’cordin’ to the poetry!—

“‘Out to elbows,
Out to toes,
Out o’ money,
Out o’ clothes.’

But—”

“Caan’t ’e say what’s happened, you chitterin’ auld magpie? I’ll go up village for the news in a minute. I lay ’tis knawn theer.”

“Ban’t I tellin’ of ’e? ’Tis like this. Will Blanchard’s been mixin’ a bit of chopped fuzz with the sheep’s meal these hard times, like his betters. But now I’ve seed hisself today, lookin’ so auld as Cosdon ’bout it. He was gwaine to the horse doctor to Moreton. An’ he tawld me to keep my mouth shut, which I’ve done for the most paart.”

“A little fuzz chopped fine doan’t hurt sheep.”

“Just so. ’Cause why? They aint got no ‘bibles’ in their innards; but he’ve gone an’ given it same way to the bullocks.”

“Gude God!”

“’Tis death to beasts wi’ ‘bibles.’ An’ death it is. The things caan’t eat such stuff’ cause it sticketh an’ brings inflammation. I seed same fule’s trick done wance thirty year ago; an’ when the animals weer cut awpen, theer ‘bibles’ was hell-hot wi’ the awfulest inflammation ever you heard tell of.”

“How many’s down? ’Twas all he had to count upon.”

“Awnly eight standin’ when he left. I could have cried ’bout it when he tawld me. He ’m clay in the Potter’s hand for sartain. Theer’s nought squenches a chap like havin’ the bailiffs in.”

“Cruel luck! I’d meant to let him be sold out for his gude—but now.”

“Do what you meant to. Doan’t go back on it. ’Tis for his gude. ’Twas his awn mistake. He tawld me the blame was his. Let un get on the bed rock. Then he’ll be meek as a worm.”

“I doubt it. A sale of his goods will break his heart.”

“Not it! He haven’t got much as’ll be hard to paart from. Stern measures—stern measures for his everlastin’ welfare. Think of the wild-fire sawl of un! Never yet did a sawl want steadin’ worse’n his. Keep you to the fust plan, and he’ll thank’e yet.”

Elsewhere two women—his wife and sister—failed utterly in well-meaning efforts to comfort the stricken farmer. Presently, before nightfall, Mrs. Blanchard also arrived at Newtake, and Will listened dully with smouldering eyes as his mother talked. The veterinary surgeon from Moreton had come, but his efforts were vain. Only two beasts out of five-and-twenty still lived.

“Send for butcher,” he said. “He’ll be more use than I can be. The thing is done and can’t be undone.”

Chris entered most closely into her brother’s feelings and spared him the expressions of sorrow and sympathy which stung him, even from his mother’s lips, uttered at this crisis. She set about preparing supper, which weeping Phoebe had forgotten.

“You’ll weather it yet, bwoy,” Mrs. Blanchard said.

“Theer’s a little bit as I’ve got stowed away for’e; an’ come the hay—”

“Doan’t talk that way. ’Tis done with now. I’m quite cool’pon it. We must go as we’m driven. No more gropin’ an’ fightin’ on this blasted wilderness for me, that’s all. I be gwaine to turn my back ’pon it—fog an’ filthy weather an’ ice an’ snow. You wants angels from heaven to help ’e, if you’re to do any gude here; an’ heaven’s long tired o’ me an’ mine. So I’ll make shift to do wi’out. An’ never tell me no more lies ’bout God helpin’ them as helps themselves, ’cause I’ve proved it ban’t so. I be gwaine to furrin’ lands to dig for gawld or di’monds. The right build o’ man for gawld-seekin’, me; ’cause I’ve larned patience an’ caan’t be choked off a job tu easy.”

“Think twice. Bad luck doan’t dog a man for ever. An’ Phoebe an’ the childer.”

“My mind’s made up. I figured it out comin’ home from Moreton. I’m away in six weeks or less. A chap what’s got to dig for a livin’ may just as well handle his tools where theer’s summat worth findin’ hid in the land, as here, on this black, damned airth, wheer your pick strikes fire out o’ stone twenty times a day. The Moor’s the Moor. Everybody knaws the way of it. Scratch its faace an’ it picks your pocket an’ breaks your heart—not as I’ve got a heart can be broken.”

“If ’e could awnly put more trust in the God of your faithers, my son. He done for them, why shouldn’t He do for you?”

“Better ax Him. Tired of the fam’ly, I reckon.”

“You hurt your mother, Will, tellin’ so wicked as that.”

“An’ faither so cruel,” sobbed Phoebe. “I doan’t knaw what ever us have done to set him an’ God against us so. I’ve tried that hard; an’ you’ve toiled till the muscles shawed through your skin; an’ the li’l bwoy took just as he beginned to string words that butivul; an’ no sign of another though’t is my endless prayer.”

“The ways of Providence—” began Mrs. Blanchard drearily; but Will stopped her, as she knew he would.

“Doan’t mother—I caan’t stand no more on that head today. I’ll dare anybody to name Providence more in my house, so long as ’tis mine. Theer’s the facts to shout out ’gainst that rot. A honest, just, plain-dealin’ man—an’ look at me.”

“Meantime we’re ruined an’ faither doan’t hold out a finger.”

“Take it stern an’ hard like me. ’Tis all chance drawin’ of prize or blank in gawld diggin’. The ‘new chums,’ as they call ’em, often finds the best gawld, ’cause they doan’t knaw wheer to look for it, an’ goes pokin’ about wheer a skilled man wouldn’t. That’s the crooked way things happen in this poor world.”

“You wouldn’t go—not while I lived, sure? I couldn’t draw breath comfortable wi’out knawin’ you was breathin’ the same air, my son.”

“You’ll live to knaw I was in the right. If fortune doan’t come to you, you must go to it, I reckon. Anyways, I ban’t gwaine to bide here a laughing-stock to Chagford; an’ you’m the last to ax me to.”

“Miller would never let Phoebe go.”

“I shouldn’t say ’by your leave’ to him, I promise’e. He can look on an’ see the coat rottin’ off my back in this desert an’ watch his darter gwaine thin as a lath along o’ taking so much thought. He can look on at us, hisself so comfortable as a maggot in a pear, an’ see. Not that I’d take help—not a penny from any man. I’m not gwaine to fail. I’ll be a snug chap yet.”

The stolid Chown entered at this moment.

“Butcher’ll be up bimebye. An’ the last of em’s failed down,” he said.

“So be it. Now us’ll taake our supper,” answered his master.

The meal was ready and presently Blanchard, whose present bitter humour prompted him to simulate a large indifference, made show of enjoying his food. He brought out the brandy for his mother, who drank a little with her supper, and helped himself liberally twice or thrice until the bottle was half emptied. The glamour of the spirit made him optimistic, and he spoke with the pseudo-philosophy that alcohol begets.

“Might have been worse, come to think of it. If the things weren’t choked, I doubt they’d been near starved. ’Most all the hay’s done, an’ half what’s left—a load or so—I’d promised to a chap out Manaton way. But theer’t is—my hand be forced, that’s all. So time’s saved, if you look at it from a right point.”

“You’m hard an’ braave, an’ you’ve got a way with you ’mong men. Faace life, same as faither did, an’ us’ll look arter Phoebe an’ the childer,” said Chris.

“I couldn’t leave un,” declared Will’s wife. “’T is my duty to keep along wi’un for better or worse.”

“Us’ll talk ’bout all that later. I be gwaine to act prompt an’ sell every stick, an’ then away, a free man.”

“All our furniture an’ property!” moaned Phoebe, looking round her in dismay.

“All—to the leastest bit o’ cracked cloam.”

“A forced sale brings nought,” sighed Damaris.

“Theer’s hunderds o’ pounds o’ gude chattels here, an’ they doan’t go for a penny less than they ’m worth. Because I’m down, ban’t no reason for others to try to rob me. If I doan’t get fair money I’ll make a fire wi’ the stuff an’ burn every stick of it.”

“The valuer man, Mr. Bambridge, must be seen, an’ bills printed out an’ sticked ’pon barn doors an’ such-like, same as when Mrs. Lezzard died,” said Phoebe. “What’ll faither think then?”

Will laughed bitterly.

“I’ll see a few’s dabbed up on his awn damned outer walls, if I’ve got to put ’em theer myself. An’ as to the lists, I’ll make ’em this very night. Ban’t my way to let the dust fall upon a job marked for doin’. To-night I’ll draw the items.”

“Us was gwaine to stay along with ’e, Will,” said his mother.

“Very gude—as you please. Make shake-downs in the parlour, an’ I’ll write in the kitchen when you’m gone to bed. Set the ink an’ pen an’ paper out arter you’ve cleared away. I’m allowed to be peart enough in matters o’ business anyway, though no farmer o’ course, arter this.”

“None will dare to say any such thing,” declared Phoebe. “You can’t do miracles more than others.”

“I mind when Ellis, to Two Streams Farm, lost a mort o’ bullocks very same way,” said Mrs. Blanchard.

“’Tis that as they’ll bring against me an’ say, wi’ such a tale in my knawledge, I ought to been wiser. But I never heard tell of it before, though God knows I’ve heard the story often enough to-day.”

It was now dark, and Will, lighting a lantern, rose and went out into the yard. From the kitchen window his women watched him moving here and there; while, as he passed, the light revealed great motionless, rufous shapes on every hand. The corpses of the beasts hove up into the illumination and then vanished again as the narrow circle of lantern light bobbed on, jerking to the beat of Will’s footsteps. From the window Damaris observed her son make a complete perambulation of his trouble without comment. Then a little emotion trembled on her tongue.

“God’s hand be lifted ’gainst the bwoy, same as ’t was ’gainst the patriarch Job seemin’ly. Awnly he bent to the rod and Will—”

“He’m noble an’ grand under his sorrows. Who should knaw but me?” cried Phoebe. “A man in ten thousand, he is, an’ never yields to no rod. He’ll win his way yet; an’ I be gwaine to cleave to un if he travels to the other end o’ the airth.”

“I doan’t judge un, gal. God knaws he’s been the world to me since his faither died. He’m my dear son. But if he’d awnly bend afore the A’mighty breaks him.”

“He’s got me.”

“Ess, an’ he’m mouldin’ you to his awn vain pride an’ wrong ways o’ thinking. If you could lead un right, ’t would be a better wife’s paart.”

“He’m wiser’n me, an’ stronger. Ban’t my place to think against him. Us’ll go our ways, childern tu, an’ turn our backs ’pon this desert. I hate the plaace now, same as Will.”