The whirlwind

by Eden Phillpotts

BOOK I

CHAPTER I
THE MAN ON THE CAIRN

Fifty years ago a wild and stormy sky spread above the gorges of Lyd, and the vale was flooded in silver mist, dazzling by contrast with the darkness round about. Great welter of vapour, here radiant, here gloomy, obscured the sinking sun; but whence he shone, vans of wet light fell through the tumultuous clouds, and touched into sudden, humid, and luminous brilliancy the forests and hills beneath.

A high wind raged along the sky and roared over the grave-crowned bosom of White Hill on Northern Dartmoor. Before it, like an autumn leaf, one solitary soul appeared to be blown. Beheld from afar, he presented an elongated spot driven between earth and air; but viewed more closely, the man revealed unusual stature and great physical strength. The storm was not thrusting him before it; accident merely willed that the wind and he should be fellow-travellers.

Grey cairns of the stone heroes of old lie together on the crest of White Hill, and the man now climbed one of these heaps of granite, and stood there, and gazed upon an immense vision outspread easterly against oncoming night. It was as though the hours of darkness, tramping lowly in the sun's wake, had thrown before them pioneers of cloud. Two ranges of jagged tors swept across the skyline and rose, grey and shadowy, against the purple of the air. Already their pinnacles were dissolved into gloom, and from Great Links, the warden of the range, right and left to lower elevations, the fog banks rolled and crept along under the naked shoulders of the hills. Over this huge amphitheatre the man's eyes passed; then, where Ger Tor lifts its crags above Tavy, another spirit was manifest, and evidences of humanity became apparent upon the fringes of the Moor. Here trivial detail threaded the confines of inviolate space; walls stretched hither and thither; a scatter of white dots showed where the sheep roamed; and, at valley-bottom, a mile under the barrows of White Hill, folded in peace, with its crofts and arable land about it, lay a homestead. Rounded clumps of beech and sycamore concealed the dwelling; the farm itself stood at the apex of a triangle, whose base widened out into fertile regions southerly. Meadows, very verdant after hay harvest, extended here, and about the invisible house stood ricks, out-buildings, that glimmered cold as water under corrugated iron roofs, and a glaucous patch of garden green, where flourished half an acre of cabbage. One field had geese upon it; in another, two horses grazed. A leat drawn from Tavy wound into the domains of the farm, and a second rivulet fell out of the Moor beside it. Cows were being driven into the yard. An earth-coloured man tended them, and a black and white speck raced violently about in their rear. A dog's faint barking might be heard upon the hill when the wind lulled.

THE CAIRNS ON WHITE HILL

The contrast between the ambient desolation and this sequestered abode of human life impressed itself upon the spectator's slow mind. Again he ranged the ring of hills with his eyes; then lowered them to Ruddyford Farm. Despite the turmoil of the hour and the hum and roar of the wind; despite the savage glories of a silver sunset westerly and the bleak and leaden aspect of the east; despite the rain that now touched his nape coldly and flogged the forgotten tomb on which he stood; this man's heart was warm, and he smiled into the comfortable valley and nodded his head with appreciation.

The rain and the wind had been his companions from childhood; the sunshine and the seasons belonged to him as environment of daily life. He minded the manifestations of nature as little as the ponies that now scampered past him in a whinnying drove; he was young and as yet knew no pain; he regarded the advent of winter without fear, and welcomed the equinox of autumn as indifferently as the first frost or the spring rain. These things only concerned him when they bore upon husbandry and the business of life.

Now, like a map rolled out before his eyes, lay the man's new home and extended the theatre of his future days. Upon this great stage he would move henceforth, pursue hope, fulfil destiny, and perchance win the things that he desired to win.

The accidents of wind and storm surrounding this introduction did not influence the newcomer or affect his mind. Intensity and rare powers of faith belonged to him; but imagination was little indicated in his character. His interest now poured out upon the cultivated earth spread below, and had his actual future habitation been visible instead of hidden, it had not attracted him. That behind the sycamores there stood a roof-tree henceforth to shield his head, mattered nothing; that within its walls were now congregated his future master and companions, did not impress itself upon his thoughts. He was occupied with the fertile acres, now fading into night, and with the cattle that pastured round about upon the Moor. Familiar with the face of the earth seen afar off, he calculated to a few tons what hay had recently been saved here, appreciated certain evidences of prosperity, as revealed by the aspect and position of the fields; noted with satisfaction the marks of agricultural wisdom; frowned at signs that argued other views than his own.

He pictured himself at work, longed to be at it, yearned for outlets to his great, natural energies and vigorous bent of mind. Death had thrown him into the market of men, and, after three months' idleness, he found a new task, on a part of the Moor remote from his former labours. But the familiar aspects of the waste attracted him irresistibly. He rejoiced to return, to feel the heath under his feet, and see the manner of his future toil clearly written under his eyes. It seemed to him that Ruddyford, with its garden, tenements, and outlying fields, was but an unfinished thing waiting for his sure hand to complete. He would strengthen the walls, widen the borders, heighten the welfare of this farm. No glance backward into the glories of the sunset did he give, for he was young. The peace of Lydford's woodland glades and the lush, low lands beneath, drew no desire from him. Villages, hamlets, and the gregarious life of them, attracted him not at all. The sky to live under, a roof to sleep under, Dartmoor to work upon: these were the things that he found precious at this season. And Fate had granted them all.

Clouds touched his face coldly; the nightly mists swept down and concealed the hills and valleys spread between. For a moment Ruddyford peeped, like a picture, from a frame of cobweb colour. Then it was hidden by sheets of rain.

The man leapt off the grave of that other man, whose ashes in the morning of days had here been buried. So long had he stood motionless that it seemed as though a statue, set up to some vanished hero, grew suddenly incarnate, and, animated by the spirit of the mighty dead, now hastened from this uplifted loneliness down into the highways of life.

A fierce torrent scourged the hill as the traveller hurried from it. He was drenched before he reached the farmhouse door. A dog ran out and growled and showed its teeth at him. Then, in answer to his knock, an old man came slowly down the stone-paved passage.

"Ah, you'll be Mr. Daniel Brendon, no doubt? Your box was fetched up from Mary Tavy this marning. You catched that scat o' rain, I'm afraid. Come in an' welcome, an' I'll show you where you'm to lie."

CHAPTER II
RUDDYFORD

A feature of Devon are those cultivated peninsulas of land that thrust forward up the surrounding coombs and point into Dartmoor's bosom. The foothills of this great tableland are fledged with forests and rich with fertile earth; but here and there, greatly daring, the farms have fought upward and reclaimed a little of the actual desolation.

Ruddyford was driven like a wedge into that stony wilderness beneath the Moor's north-western ramparts. White Hill sheltered it from the west; the flank of Ger Tor sloped easterly; to the south flowed Tavy through fertile tilth, grey hamlets, and green woods. Only northward was little immediate shelter; and upon the north Daniel Brendon opened his eyes when dawned the first day of his new life.

His chamber window showed him the glitter of a soaking world spread under grey of dawn. His little room was sparsely furnished, and the whitewashed walls were naked. He dressed, prayed, then turned to a wooden box and unpacked his few possessions. He stowed his clothes in a yellow chest-of-drawers with white china handles; his desk he put in the window, on a deep sill, the breadth of the wall. His boots and a pair of felt slippers he placed in a row. Some pictures remained. One represented his father and mother, both six years dead. The photograph was smeared with yellow, but the stain had missed the faces. An old, dogged man, in his Sunday black, sat in a chair and stared stolidly at the beholder; beside him stood a thin, tall woman of anxious eyes and gentle mouth. The face of the man explained the expression of his wife. This picture Daniel hung up on a nail; and beside it he placed another—the portrait of his only sister. There had been but two of them. His sister resembled her mother, and was married to a small tradesman at Plymouth. Her health caused Daniel uneasiness, for it was indifferent. Lastly, from the bottom of his box, he took an illuminated text, and set it over the head of his bed. His father had given it to him.

"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom."

Daniel often reflected that at least he might claim the beginning of wisdom, for greatly he feared.

Outwardly Brendon was well made, and handsome on a mighty scale. If he ever gloried it was in his strength. He stood four inches over six feet, yet, until another was placed beside him, did not appear very tall, by reason of his just proportions. He was a brown man with small, triangular whiskers and a moustache that he cut straight across his lip, like a tooth-brush. The cropped hair on his face spoilt it, for the features were finely moulded, and, in repose, revealed something of the large, soulless, physical beauty of a Greek statue of youth. His mind, after the manner of huge men, moved slowly. His eyes were of the character of a dog's: large, brown, innocent, and trustful, yet capable of flashing into passionate wrath or smouldering with emotion.

A noise, that Daniel made in hammering up his text, brought somebody to the door. It was the man who had welcomed him overnight, and he entered the newcomer's private chamber without ceremony.

"Hold on, my son!" he said. "You'll wake master, then us shall all have a very unrestful day. Mr. Woodrow be a poor sleeper, like his faither afore him, and mustn't be roused till half after seven. He bides in the room below this, so I hope as you'll always go about so gentle of a morning as your gert bulk will let 'e."

"So I will then," said Daniel. "'Tis lucky I've been moving wi'out my boots. I tread that heavy, Mr. Prout."

Old John Prout looked with admiration and some envy at the young man.

"'Tis a great gift of Providence to have such a fine body and such power of arm. But things be pretty evenly divided, when you've wit to see all round 'em. You'll have to go afoot all your life; no horse will ever carry you."

Daniel laughed.

"Nought but a cart-horse, for sartain. But my own legs be very good to travel upon."

"Without a doubt—now; wait till you'm up my age. Then the miles get dreadful long if you've got to trust to your feet. I've my own pony here, and I should be no more use than the dead branch of a tree without him."

The withered but hard old man looked round Daniel's room. He had lived all his life at Ruddyford; he was a bachelor, and devoted his life to his master. Reynold Woodrow, the present farmer's father, Prout had obeyed, but secretly disliked. Hilary Woodrow, the living owner of Ruddyford, he worshipped with devoutness and profoundly admired. The man could do no wrong in his servant's eyes.

Now John regarded Daniel's text, where it shone with tarnished crimson and gold.

"You'm a religious man, then?"

"I hope so."

"Well, why not? For my part, I like to see the chaps go to church or chapel of a Sunday. Master don't go, but he's no objection to it. He'd so soon have a Roman as a Plymouth Brother, so long as they stood to work weekdays and earned their money. 'Tis a tidy tramp to worship, however."

"Why, Lydford ban't above four miles."

"That's the distance. As for me, I don't say I'm not right with God, for I hope that I am. But, touching outward observances, I don't follow 'em. More do Mr. Woodrow, though a better man never had a bad cough."

"I'd fear to face a day's work until I'd gone on my knees," declared Brendon, without self-consciousness.

"Ah! at my time of life, us bow the heart rather than the knee—specially if the rheumatics be harboured at that joint, as in my case. But a very fine text for a bed-head, 'The fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom.' And I'll tell you another thing. The love of the Lord is the end of it. That ban't in the Bible, yet a living word as my life have taught me. I go my even way and ban't particular about prayer, nor worship, nor none of that. And as for the bread and wine, I haven't touched 'em for a score of years; yet I love the Lord an' trust Him, for all the world like a babby trusts its mother's breast for breakfast. 'Tis an awful simple religion."

"Simple enough to lose your salvation, I should reckon. If you believe, you did ought to tremble. 'Tis for God A'mighty to love you, not for you to love Him so loud, and yet do nought to show it. No prayers, no sacrament, no worship—what's that but to be a heathen man—begging your pardon?"

"You'll see different if you stop along of us. 'Tis a good working faith that breeds my peace of mind and master's. My fault is that I'm too easy with you chaps. Even the dogs know what a soft old silly I be."

Brendon considered this confession, and it brought him to a subject now upon his mind.

"What's my job exactly? How do I stand? I'd hoped to have a bit of authority myself here, along of my good papers."

"Farmer will tell 'e all about that after his breakfast. The things[[1]] will be your job, I suppose. But he'll explain himself. He's made of kindness, yet no common sort of man. Them as know him would go through fire an' water for him. However, 'tis an art to know him, and only comes with patience."

[[1]] Things. Cattle. A moor-man always speaks of 'things' when he means flocks and herds.

"Not married?"

"No, nor like to be. He offered hisself to a cat-hearted minx down to Peter Tavy; and she took him; and 'twas all settled. Then there comed along, a cousin of hers, who has a linen-draper's shop near London, and be damned if she didn't change her mind! It set Hilary Woodrow against women, as well it might. There's only one female in this house, and you can hardly say she's a woman. Merely a voice and a pair of eyes and a pair of hands, and a few bones tied up in a petticoat. My sister, Tabitha—as good a soul as ever fretted a houseful of males. 'Bachelors' Hall' they call this place down to Lydford. And so 'tis, for only the ploughman, Joe Tapson, have ever been married; and he'll tell you plainly, without false feeling, that the day that made him a widow-man, was the first he ever thanked his God for."

A thin voice came up the stairs.

"John—breaksis!"

"Come to breakfast," said Mr. Prout. "Then I'll walk around the place with 'e, afore the master be ready."

So dull was the dawn, that firelight shone in the polished surfaces of the kitchen, and its genial glow made the morning chill and lifeless by contrast.

Three men already sat at the table, and John Prout took the head of it. The newcomer was listened to with courtesy, and his extraordinary size won him open admiration.

"A good big un's the best that woman breeds," said the widower, Tapson. He was himself a man somewhat undersized. He had but one eye, a wrinkled brown skin, and a little goat-beard; but the rest of his face was shaved clean once a week—on Sunday morning.

"No tender spot?" he asked. "So often you gert whackers have a soft place somewhere that brings you down to the level of common men when it comes to work. 'Tis the heart gets tired most often, along wi' the power o' pumping the blood to the frame."

"No weak spot that I know about, thank God," said Daniel.

"Us'll have to get up a wraslin' bout betwixt you and the 'Infant,'" declared another labourer, called Agg. He was a red man of average size, with a pleasant and simple countenance.

"The 'Infant's' a chap to Lydford," he explained. "He was at a shop up in London, but got home-sick an' come back to the country. Very near so large as you be."

"I know about him," answered Brendon. "'Tis William Churchward, the schoolmaster's son. There's a bit more of him below the waist than what there is of me; but I'm a lot harder and I stand two inch taller."

"You could throw him across the river," said Joe Tapson.

There came a knock at the door while breakfast progressed, and a girl appeared. She was a wild-looking, rough-haired little thing of sixteen. She entered with great self-possession, took off her sunbonnet, shook her black hair out of her eyes, and set down a large round bundle in a red handkerchief.

The men laughed; Miss Prout's voice rose to its highest cadences, and her thin shape swayed with indignation.

"Again, Susan! Twice in two months. 'Tis beyond belief, and a disgrace to the family!"

"Well, Aunt Tab, who wouldn't? Last night Aunt Hepsy didn't give me no supper, because I dropped the salt-cellar in the apple-tart—a thing anybody might do. And I'm leery as a hawk, so I am."

"There's no patience in you," grumbled Mr. Prout's sister. "Why for can't you understand the nature of your Aunt Hepsy, and make due allowances for it? Such a trollop as you—such a fuzzy-poll, down-at-heels maid—be the very one to drive her daft. 'Twas a Christian act to take you—friendless orphan that you be; but as to service—how you think you'll ever rise to it, I can't say."

Susan's uncle had given her some breakfast, and she ate heartily, and showed herself quite at home.

"Aunt Hepsy's always a bit kinder after I've runned away, however," exclaimed the girl; "that is, after she've told me what she thinks about me."

Daniel Brendon observed Susan closely, for she sat on a kitchen form beside him at Mr. Prout's right hand. A neat little budding shape she had, and small brown hands, like a monkey's.

Presently she looked up at him inquiringly.

"This here's Mr. Brendon," explained Agg. Then he turned to Daniel.

"The maiden be Mr. Prout's niece, you must know. She's with the family of Weekes to Lydford, learning to get clever for sarvice. But she'm always running away—ban't you, Susan? Here's the mustard to your bacon, my dear."

"I run away when I'm that pushed," explained Susan, with her mouth full. "'Tis a lesson to 'em. I wouldn't run from Uncle Weekes, for a kinder man never lives; but Aunt Hepsy's different."

"For that matter, I dare say Phil Weekes would be jolly glad to run along with you sometimes, if he could," said Tapson. But the remark annoyed Miss Prout, and she reproved him sharply.

"You'll do better to mind your own affairs, Joe. Ban't no business of yours to talk rude about other people's families; an' I'll thank you not to do so. No man ever had a better wife than Philip Weekes have got; which I say, though she is my own flesh and blood; and 'tis a very improper thing all you men siding with this here silly little toad; and you ought to stop it, John, as well you know."

"So I ought," admitted Mr. Prout. "Now, up an' away. And, after dinner, I be going into Lydford, so you can come back along wi' me, Susan."

"Let me bide one day," pleaded the girl. "Then I can help Aunt Tab wi' the washing."

"Right well you know the time to come here, you cunning wench!" said her aunt. "Some of these days, Susie, Hephzibah Weekes won't take 'e back at all. Her patience ban't her first virtue, as you ought to know by this time."

"So I do. But her power of keeping money in her pocket be. She'll always take me back, because I'm the only maiden as she'll ever get for nought. She says I ought to pay her!"

"So you ought, if you could. Didn't you go to her after your mother died, wi'out a smurry to your back? There's no gratitude in girls nowadays. Well, you can bide till to-morrow; and, so soon as you've done, you'd best to light wash-house fire, while I clear up."

Brendon walked round Ruddyford presently with the head man, and saw much to admire and not a little to regret. He longed to be at work that he might reveal his modern principles and knowledge; but Mr. Prout was not much impressed by Daniel's opinions, and showed a stout, conservative spirit.

"You'm a great man for new-fangled notions, I see," he remarked. "Well, you must tell master 'bout it. For my part, I've made up my mind on most questions of farming by now, and can't change no more. But he'll hear you. Trust him for that. He hears us all with wonderful large patience for a young man of his age. I'm glad you like the place. 'Tis a funny old sort of a spot, but I wouldn't go nowheres else for a hat of money."

At ten o'clock Hilary Woodrow came into the kitchen, where his new man was waiting for him.

"Morning, Tabitha,' said the farmer. Then he turned to Brendon.

"Come this way, please. We'll talk in the air."

They walked together beside the great patch of cabbage that Daniel had marked from the hills.

"Your character was very good, and I'm glad to have you here," began the farmer.

He indicated the work he expected, and the general rules, hours and regulations of Ruddyford, while Daniel listened in silence.

Hilary Woodrow was a thin man of medium height and rather refined appearance. His colour was dark and his face clearly cut, with small, delicate features. His voice was gentle, and an air of lassitude sat upon him, as though life already tended to weariness. His age was thirty-five, but he looked rather more, and a touch of grey already appeared about the sides of his head. To Daniel he appeared a very fragile being, and yet his clear, cold voice and his choice of words impressed the labourer, though he knew not why. Brendon felt that his master possessed a master's power. He found himself touching his forelock instinctively, when the other stopped sometimes and looked him straight in the face.

This secret of strength was built upon dual foundations. Woodrow possessed a strong will, and he had enjoyed an unusual education. His father and mother, fired by ambition for their only child, had sent him to Tavistock Grammar School. Thence he went to London to read law, but neither the place nor the profession suited him. He learnt much, but gladly returned to Dartmoor when his father died suddenly and left his mother alone. At her husband's death, Hester Woodrow's dreams for the boy instantly crumbled, and she was well content that her son should succeed Reynold Woodrow and remain beside her. Hilary's health offered another reason, for London had done him little good in respect of that. He was a sensual man.

The large events of his life numbered few. First came experience of the metropolis; and since one must wither a while in cities before the full, far-reaching message of nature can be read, his years in London largely helped to teach young Woodrow the meaning and the blessing of his home. Then fell a father's death; and it awoke him to experience of grief and the weight of responsibility. Following upon these enlightenments came love. He was accepted, and jilted after the wedding-day had been named. Lastly, just before his thirtieth birthday, his mother died and left him alone in the world, for he had no near relations. Ruddyford was a freehold farm, and now Hilary Woodrow owned it. On his mother's death he had felt disposed to throw up all and travel. But he found himself uneasy in mind and body if long absent from the high grounds of the Moor; and finally he determined to spend his days as his father had done before him.

Much did the Prouts desire a mistress at Ruddyford for the comfort of everybody concerned there; but Hilary, after his reverse, held aloof from women. Indeed, his life was very solitary for so young a man. He did not make friends, and, among his equals, was cold and reserved. He felt a little nervous of his health, and showed a sensitiveness to weather that puzzled the folk who are superior to that weakness.

Thus he stood, at the limits of youth, and gazed ahead without much enthusiasm or interest. He found great pleasure in books and in riding. He did not smoke, and drank but little. His heart was kind, and he performed good deeds, if they were easy to perform. His mind was of a sceptic bent, but he prided himself justly on a generous tolerance. Most men liked him and wished that they knew him better; but he was a character more likely to be understood by women than men.

Daniel Brendon listened to his duties, and found himself disappointed. No special department awaited him; no control was destined to be placed in his hands. He had come to help with the rough and varied work of the farm. It was expected of him to turn his hand to anything and everything; to take his daily task from John Prout, and to stand on the same footing as the other labourers.

"Mr. Prout said something about the beasts," he explained, slowly. "'Twas my hope, master, as you'd put a bit of trust in me, seeing my papers."

"I put trust in everybody. You'll never find a more trustful man. It's a secret of farming to trust—when you can."

"But I had the handling of a power of things at Postbridge."

"So you will have with me."

"A man an' a boy under my orders, too."

Woodrow laughed.

"I see. You'll only have three dogs under your orders here."

"Not that I want——"

"Yes, you do—we all do. You'll get power enough, Brendon, if 'tis in you. Power comes out of ourselves. Go ahead and do your work. Perhaps, six months hence, you'll be so powerful that we shall have to part company—eh?"

"I know my job very well."

"Of course you do. I shouldn't want you otherwise. If your will is as strong as your legs and arms, you ought to have a farm of your own before long. How old are you?"

"Twenty-five, master."

"I'd give Ruddyford twice over to have your limbs."

"They are so good as yours, while you pay for 'em."

"Go ahead, then. Take a tramp round before dinner, and see what you think of those heifers up the hill. I've had an offer for them, but don't feel quite satisfied. Tell me what you reckon they are worth—taking the whole five-and-twenty together."

In two minutes Daniel was away with a couple of sheepdogs after him. He reflected on this, his first piece of work, and it pleased him. He was an accurate judge of stock and knew that he could estimate very closely the value of the heifers.

CHAPTER III
A THEATRE OF FAILURE

With his thoughts for company Brendon strode upon an errand to the high Moor. He had been at Ruddyford a fortnight, and liked the people, but his master troubled him, for he did not understand Mr. Woodrow's attitude. The farmer's silence puzzled Daniel more than hard words had done. His consolation was that a like reticence and apparent indifference were displayed to all.

THE OLD PEAT WORKS

Now Brendon climbed aloft to the lonely bosom of Amicombe Hill. He breasted the eastern shoulder of Great Links, and then stood a moment, startled by the strangeness of the scene before him. This field of industry had already passed into the catalogue of man's failures upon Dartmoor, and ruin marked the spot. Round about, as though torn by giant ploughs, the shaggy slope of the hill was seamed and ripped with long lines of darkness. A broken wall or two rose here and there, and radiating amid the desolation of bog and mire, old tramways ran red. In the midst of these morasses stood the peat works, like a mass of simmering, molten metal poured out upon the Moor and left to rust there. Low stone buildings with rotten roofs, gleaming corrugated iron still white, black walls, broken chimneys, and scattered debris of stone and steel huddled here in mournful decay. Everywhere cracked wheels, broken trolleys, twisted tram-lines, and dilapidated plant, sank into wreck and rot amid the growing things. Like a sea the waste billowed round about and began to swallow and smother this futile enterprise. Leaks and cracks gaped everywhere. Raw mountains of peat slowly grew green again under heath and grass and the wild sorrel. Here were miles of rusty wire in huge red tangles, that looked as though the lightning had played at cat's-cradle with them; here washes of dim and dingy green swept the hills; here flat liverworts and tumid fungus ate the woodwork like cancers; here beds of emerald sphagnum swallowed the old peat-knives and spades. Sections of the peat laid bare showed a gradual change in quality, from the tough and fibrous integument of heather-root and grass, to a pure cake, growing heavier and darker, until, two yards from the surface, it was inky black and soft as butter. From six to ten feet of this fuel spread in a layer of many million tons over the granite bones of Amicombe Hill. Immense quantities were already removed, but the enterprise failed utterly, and the great hill, where so much of sanguine toil had been expended, still stretched under the sky with little more than scratches on its face.

Brendon approached this cemetery of hope, to find a ghost there. The buildings, dwarfed by distance, soon towered above him as he reached them, and he found that they contained huge chambers internally blackened by the peat, yet illuminated by shafts of outer light that pierced into them. Through broken windows and gaping walls day came, and revealed immense, silent wheels, and bars thrust out of hollows, and deep pits. Great pipes stretched from darkness into darkness again; drums and tanks and forges stood up about him; mysterious apertures sundered the walls and gaped in the floors; strange implements appeared; stacks of peat-cake rose, piled orderly; broken bricks, silent machinery, hillocks of rubbish and dirt, heaps of metal and balks of timber loomed together from a dusky twilight, and choked these stricken and shadowy halls.

Dead silence reigned here to Daniel's ears, fresh from the songs of the wind on the Moor. But, as his eyes grew accustomed to the velvety darkness and fitful illumination of these earth-stained chambers, so his ears also were presently tuned to the peace of the place. Then, through the stillness, there came a sound, like some great creature breathing in sleep. It was too regular for the wind, too loud for any life. It panted steadily, and the noise appeared to come from beneath the listener's feet.

Daniel lifted his voice, and it thundered and clanged about him, like a sudden explosion. A dozen echoes wakened, and he guessed that no such volume of sound had rolled through these iron-vaulted chambers since the machinery ceased.

"Be you here, Mr. Friend?" he shouted, and all the stagnant air rang.

No answering voice reached him; but the stertorous breathing ceased, and presently came the fall of slow feet. A head rose out of the earth; then it emerged, and a body and legs followed.

"Come down below, will 'e? I can't leave my work," said the apparition; then it sank again, and Brendon followed it down a flight of wooden steps. One cracked under his weight.

"Mind what you'm doing," called back the leader. "They'm rotten as touchwood in places."

Below was a forge, which Daniel had heard panting, and beside it stood retorts and various rough chemical appliances. The operator returned to his bellows and a great ray of hot, red light flashed and waned, flashed and waned.

Like some ancient alchemist amid his alembics, the older man now appeared, and his countenance lent aid to the simile, for it was bearded and harsh and bright of eye. Gregory Friend might have been sixty, and looked almost aged under these conditions. His natural colour was fair, but a life in the atmosphere of the great fuel-beds had stained his visible parts to redness. His very beard, folk said, was dyed darker than nature. He stood there, a strange man of fanatic spirit; and his eyes showed it. They burnt with unconquerable hope; they indicated a being to whom some sort of faith must be the breath of life. It remained for Daniel to discover the articles of that faith; and they were not far to seek.

"I be come from Ruddyford," said the labourer. "Master wants four journeys o' peat, and I was to say that the carts will be up Tuesday."

Friend nodded.

"'Tis ready; and a thousand journeys for that matter. Look here. The Company have sent these samples from Wales. What do 'e think of 'em?"

"I ban't skilled in peat," said Daniel. "It seems all right."

"Not to my eye. Peat be sent up to me from Scotland and Wales and Ireland; and I try it with my tools here. But 'tis trash—all trash—alongside our peat. There's less tar to it, an' less gas to it, an' less power o' heat to it. Do 'e see these?"

The expert handed Daniel a number of little, heavy, black cakes, as hard as a brick.

"You've made 'em, I suppose?"

"'Tis Amicombe peat—the best in the world. Better than coal, you might almost say. We dry and we powder; then we build the cakes an' put 'em in thicky press till they are squeezed as hard as stone. There's your fuel! 'Twill smelt iron in the furnace! What other fashion o' peat but ours can do it? None as ever I heard tell about. Look at this here tar. What other peat will give you such stuff? None—none but Amicombe Hill. Millions of tons waiting—thousands of pounds of good money lying here under this heath—waiting."

"And 'twill have to wait, seemingly."

"That's the point. People think the Company's dead. But it ban't dead. I've seen the whole history. I was among the first they took on. I helped from the beginning. It ban't dead, only in low water. They may start again—they must. 'Tis madness to stop now."

"You believe in it?"

"I'd stake my last shilling in it. For that matter, I have done so. Company owes me fifty pounds less three, this very minute. But if the wise ones have their way, I'll get five hundred for my fifty yet."

Mr. Friend's fire had sunk low; into the darkness from above shot one ray of daylight, blue by contrast with the gloom of the laboratory.

"Come an' have a look at the engine," said the caretaker. "'Tis near twenty year since steam was up; and I've given such watchful heed to it that us might be running again in a week—but for a plate here and there that's eaten away."

Brendon had wit to perceive that Mr. Friend's perspective was distorted in this matter. As one who lives intimately with a companion, and cleaves too close to mark the truth of Time's sure carving on a loved face, so this enthusiast quite failed to appreciate the real state of the peat works, or their absolute and utter ruination.

The Company indeed lingered, but any likelihood of reconstruction was remote. From time to time engineers appeared upon the scene, made suggestions, and revived Gregory Friend; but nought came of these visits: everything remained stationary save the hand of Nature.

Daniel praised a fifteen-horse-power engine, which the guardian of this desolation kept oiled and clean; he heard the peat expert's story, and discovered that, while Friend's belief in man had long since perished, his belief in Amicombe Hill and its hoarded possibilities was boundless and unshaken. This shaggy monster, heather-clad, with unctuous black fen rolling ten feet thick over its granite ribs, was his God. He worshipped it, ministered to it, played high priest to it. They walked together presently over the shining ridges where black pools lay and chocolate-coloured cuttings shone, fringed with the pink bog-heather. Mr. Friend thrust his fingers into the peat and reviewed a thousand great scads, where they stood upright, propped together to dry. In Gregory's eyes, as they wandered upon that scene forlorn, were the reverence of a worshipper and the pride of a parent.

"They've never yet proved it," he said. "But I have. Not an acre of these miles but I've tested. 'Tis all good, right through."

"But master was talking a bit ago, and he said that your peat-cake be more expensive than coals, when all's said."

"He's wrong, then. Ton per ton you could have the pressed cake for a thought less than coal—if they'd only listen to me. But there 'tis; they'm stiff-necked, and send down empty fools instead of practical people. They talk folly and pocket their cash and go; and nothing comes of it; and I be left to wait till they hear me. A sensible man will happen along presently. Until then, the place is in my hands. Only I and the God that made this here hill, know what be in it. China clay, mind you, as well! I've showed it to 'em. I've put it under their noses, but they won't hearken."

"D'you live up here?"

"I do—across to Dunnagoat Cottage. Us'll go back that way and I'll give 'e a drink."

Friend washed his hands in a pool. Then he returned to the works, extinguished his lamp and fire, locked the outer door of the great chambers, and set off southward beside Brendon.

He learnt the newcomer's name, remarked on his size, and then returned to peat. But Daniel was weary of the subject and strove to change it.

"You'm lonely up here, I reckon, an' not another house for miles," he said.

"I keep up here and bide honest," answered Friend. "If you go down-along among the rogues, your honesty wears away, an' you never know it have gone, till somebody stands up to your face and tells you so. I've seen young men slide from it without ever meaning to. As to being lonely, I've got my darter and my work. I go to Lydford once a week for letters. But a town drives me mad—all the noise and business and silly talk."

They tramped over coarse fen, spattered with ling and the ragged white tufts of the cotton grass. Upon the waste shone cheerful light, where the blades of rough moor herbage began to perish from their tips and burn orange-red. Through the midst ran a pathway on which the gravel of granite glittered. Pools extended round about, and beneath them the infant Rattle-brook, newcome from her cradle under Hunter Tor, purred southward to Tavy.

TAVY CLEEVE.

The men followed this stream, and so approached a solitary grey cottage that stood nakedly in the very heart of the wilderness. Stark space surrounded it. At first sight it looked no more than a boulder, larger than common, that had been hurled hither from the neighbouring hill at some seismic convulsion of olden days. But, unlike the stones around it, this lump of lifted granite was hollow, had windows pierced in its lowly chambers, and a hearth upon its floor. It seemed a thing lifted by some sleight of power unknown, for it rose here utterly unexpected and, as it appeared, without purpose. No trace was left of the means by which it came. Not a wall, not a bank or alignment encircled it; no enclosure of any kind approached it; no outer rampart fenced it from the desolation. Heather-clad ridges of peat ran to the very threshold; rough natural clitters of rock tumbled to its walls; door and windows opened upon primal chaos, rolling and rising, sinking and falling in leagues on every side. Heavy morasses stretched to north and east; westward rose Dunnagoat Tor, that gave a name to the cot, and past the entrance Rattle-brook rippled noisily. Away, whence morning came, the great hogged back of Cut Hill swelled skyward, and the towers and battlements of Fur Tor arose; while southerly, brown, featureless, interminable undulations drifted along the horizon and faded upon air, or climbed to the far distant crags and precipices of Great Mis.

The door of Gregory Friend's home faced west; and now it framed a woman.

CHAPTER IV
SYMPATHY

Sarah Jane Friend's eyes opened wide to see so mighty a stranger approaching with her father. But he was of their own class, for his raiment proclaimed him. Therefore the woman left the doorstep and walked a little way to meet them.

Of purest Saxon type was she. One might have guessed that some strain of blood from the Heptarchy had been handed onward through the centuries, unalloyed with any Celtic or Norman addition. So did not the aboriginal Danmonii look; for the women who herded in the old granite lodges aforetime and logged the stoneman's babies in a wolf-skin were swarthy and small. Sarah Jane stood five feet ten, and was fair of face. Her hair shone of the palest gold that a woman's hair can be; her skin was white. Only the summer suns and the wind from the ocean warmed it to clear redness. When winter came again and the light was low, her face grew pale once more. But pallid it was not. Health shone in her radiant blue eyes and on her lips. She revealed great riches of natural beauty, but they were displayed to no artificial advantage, and her generous breast and stately hips went uncontrolled. She was clad in a dirty print gown, over which, for apron, hung an old sack with "Amicombe Peat Works" stamped in faded black letters across it. Her sleeves were rolled up; her hair was wild about her nape.

Mr. Friend had found Daniel to his taste, for a steadfast listener always cheered him and made him amiable.

"This be Mr. Daniel Brendon," he said. "He'm working to Ruddyford, and comes up with a message. Give us a drink o' cider."

Sarah nodded, cast a swift glance at the labourer, and returned to her house.

"Won't come in—I be in such a muck o' dirt," declared Dan; but the other insisted.

"Peat ban't dirt," he said. "'Tis sweet, wholesome stuff, an' good anywhere."

They sat at a deal table presently, and Gregory's daughter brought two large stone-ware mugs decorated with black trees on a blue ground. She poured out their cider and spoke to the visitor.

"How do 'e like it down-along then, mister?"

"Very nice, thank you kindly," he answered, looking into her eyes and wondering at the colour of them.

"John Prout's a good old chap," she said.

"So he is, then. Never met a better."

"How his sister can keep all you men in order I don't know, I'm sure."

"She's a very patient creature. Here's luck, Mr. Friend."

He turned to the peat-master and lifted his mug. Gregory thanked him.

"You'm an understanding chap, seemingly; though they'm rare in the rising generation. What's your work to Ruddyford?"

Dan's face fell.

"To be plain with you, not all I could wish. Master 'pears to think a man of my inches can't be no good in the head. He puts nought but heavy work upon me—not that I mind that, for I can do what it takes two others to do—to say it without boasting, being built so. But I'm an understanding man, as you be good enough to allow, and I'd hoped that he'd have seen it, too, and let me have authority here an' there."

"Of course," said Sarah Jane. "If you can do two men's work, you ought to have the ordering of people."

"But a big arm be nought nowadays, along o' steam power," he explained. "I haven't a word against Tapson, or Agg, or yet Lethbridge: they'm very good fellows all. But, if I may say so without being thought ill of, they'm simple men, and want a better man to watch 'em. Now such as they would bide here, for instance, and talk the minute-hand round the clock—from no badness in them, but just empty minds."

He rose and prepared to go.

"Your parts will come to be knowed, if you're skilled in 'em and bide your time," said Mr. Friend; "though if you balance patience against the shortness of life, 'tis often a question whether some among us don't push patience too far. I've been patient too long for one; but that's because I can't be nothing else. I've told 'em the great truth—God knows. But ban't my part to lead. I must obey. Yet, knowing what I know about Amicombe Hill, 'tis hard to wait. Sometimes I think the Promised Land ban't for me at all."

"I should hope the Promised Land was for all of us," ventured Daniel.

"That Land—yes. I mean yonder hill, bursting with fatness."

He waved up the valley in the direction of the peat works.

They came to the door and Sarah spoke again.

"I should think Mr. Woodrow wouldn't stand in your way. He rode up to see father last year, and was a very kindly man, though rather sorrowful-looking."

"He is a kindly man," said Brendon, "and a good master, which we all allow. But he'm only half alive, so to say. At least, the other half of him be hidden from us. He'm not one of us, along of his education. A great reader of books and a great secret thinker."

"I'm sure he'll come to know your vartues, if he's such a clever man as all that," said Sarah Jane frankly.

The compliment took Daniel's breath away. He laughed foolishly.

"'Tis terrible kind of you to say so, and I thank you very much for them words," he answered.

The father eyed them, and saw Mr. Brendon's neck and cheeks grow red. The young men often revealed these phenomena before his daughter's good wishes. She was amiable and generous-hearted. Her exceedingly sequestered life might have made some women shy; but to her it lent a candour and unconventional singleness of mind, that rendered more sophisticated spirits uneasy. The doors of her nature were thrown open; she almost thought aloud. Numerous suitors courted her in consequence, and a clown or two had erred before Sarah Jane, because they imagined that her good-natured interest in their affairs must be significant and special. Brendon, however, was not the man to make any such mistake. He departed, impressed and flattered at her sympathy; yet his mind did not dwell upon that. He sought rather to think a picture of her young face, and strove to find a just simile for her hair. He decided that it was the colour of kerning corn, when first the green fades and the milky grain begins to feel the kiss of summer.

A man cried to him before he had gone more than a hundred yards from Dunnagoat Cottage, and, rather gladly, he retraced his steps. But Sarah Jane had disappeared, and Mr. Friend was alone. Gregory advanced to meet him as he returned.

"I like you," said the elder. "You'm serious-minded and might wish to hear more about the truth of peat. What do you do of a Sunday?"

"I go to church mornings; then there's a few odd bits o' work; but I've nought between three o'clock and supper."

"Next Sunday, if the day's fine, I'm going over to Wattern Oke."

"I know the hill."

"You can meet me an' my darter there an' have a tell, if you mind to."

"I'm sure nothing would please me better, Mr. Friend—'tis a very great act of kindness to propose it."

Gregory nodded and said no more, while Brendon, gratified by the invitation, went his way.

He had no thought for the immensity of the earth vision now rolling under his feet. His eye turned inward to regard impressions recently registered by memory. Friend's strange, peat-smeared face, his shining beard, and wild eyes; Sarah Jane's neck and shoulders and straight back; her hands that held the cider-jug; her voice, so kindly—these things quite filled the man's slow brain.

Of a devout intensity under religious influence, Brendon's strenuous nature developed less favourably beneath pressure of mundane affairs. He could be passionate and he could be harsh. He found it uncommonly difficult to forgive injury, and sometimes sulked before imaginary injustice. He was somewhat sensitive and given to brooding. He knew his own good qualities, but while too modest to push them, felt secret sense of wrong when others failed to discover them swiftly. Like all men, he delighted to be taken at his own valuation; but though his humility would not publish that valuation, yet, when his cause was not advanced, he resented it and made a grievance of neglect.

It was early at present to predict his future at Ruddyford. The place proceeded automatically. Nobody was ambitious of power, or of work; each did his toll of toil, and all were friends. Nominally Mr. Prout ruled; in reality the little commonwealth had no head under the master. In time of rare disputes John Prout laid down the law and none questioned him. Few difficulties arose, for Woodrow paid well and kept the farm in a state of culture unusually high. A very rare standard of comfort prevailed, and neighbours always held that Hilary Woodrow was rather an amateur, or gentleman-farmer, than one who lived by his labours and worked for bread. But none could say of him that he neglected his business. He knew the possibilities of Ruddyford, spent only upon the land what it was worth, and devoted the greater part of his money and care to raising of sheep and cattle.

Brendon strode down the great side of Hare Tor, then suddenly perceiving that he was walking out of his way, turned right-handed. The wind blew up rain roughly from the south, and separate cloud-banks slunk along the hills, as though they hastened to some place of secret meeting. Daniel passed down among them, and was within a hundred yards of the farm, when Prout, on a grey pony, met him.

"You've seed Friend and told him about the peat?" he asked.

"Ess; 'twill be ready—'tis ready now, for that matter."

"A curious human be Greg Friend," commented Mr. Prout. "Peat! Why, he's made of peat—body and bones—just the same as me an' you be made of earth. He thinks peat, and dreams peat, and talks peat—the wonder is he don't eat peat!"

John Prout lived alone in a cottage thirty yards from the main building of Ruddyford. It contained four rooms, of which he only occupied two. Now and again Tabitha insisted upon tidying up for him, but he dreaded her visitations, and avoided them as much as possible.

Brendon stopped at his door, and John spoke again before he alighted.

"Not but what Friend isn't a very good sort of man. The peat's a bee in his bonnet, yet never an honester or straighter chap walked among us. He looks to Amicombe Hill to make everybody's fortune presently."

"He calls it the Promised Land," said Daniel.

"He do—poor fellow! He's out there. It don't promise nothing and won't yield nothing. They bogs have swallowed a long sight more solid money than anybody will ever dig up out of 'em again; and 'twould be well for Greg's peace of mind if he could see it; but he won't. He goes messing about with his bottles and bellows, and gets gas and tar out of the stuff, and makes such a fuss, as though he'd found diamonds; but 'tis all one. Peat's good, but coal's better, and God A'mighty meant it to be. You can't turn peat into coal, or hurry up nature. She won't be hurried, and there's an end of it."

"He've got a fine darter, seemingly."

Mr. Prout laughed.

"Ah! you met her—eh? Yes, she's a proper maiden—a regular wonder in her way—so open, and clear-minded as a bird. Never yet heard a girl speak so frank—'tis like a child more than what you'd expect from a grown-up woman. But ban't she lovely in her Sunday frill-de-dills! I was up over last spring, and drinked a dish of tea with 'em. Lucky the chap as gets her—bachelor though I am, I say it."

"Be she tokened?"

"A good few's after her, I believe; but there's only one in the running. I mean Jarratt Weekes to Lydford—the castle keeper there."

"I know the man—why, he's old!"

"Doan't you say that. 'Tis hard thing for my ears to hear. If he's old at forty, what be I at sixty-five? I won't let nobody say I'm old, Daniel!"

"Old for her, I mean. There must be best part of twenty year between 'em."

"It often works very well an' keeps down the family."

"Can't fancy her along with that man."

"She won't ax your leave, my son. But her father's rather of your mind, I fancy. Gregory never did like Jarratt Weekes—nor any of the Weekes breed, for that matter. Jarratt was spoiled as a child. He'm the only son of his parents, and more hard than soft—just as you would expect the child of Hepsy Weekes to be. She's stamped herself upon him."

"Us'll be late for dinner if us talk any more; though what you tell me is very interesting," answered Brendon.

CHAPTER V
THE KEEPER OF THE CASTLE

The former glories of Lydford have long since vanished away; yet once it was among the most ancient of Devon boroughs, and stood only second to Exeter in credit and renown. Before the Norman Conquest Lydford flourished as a fortified town; when, "for largeness in lands and liberties" no western centre of civilization might compare with it. But hither came the bloody Danes by way of Tavistock, to consume with fire and sword, and raze this Saxon stronghold to the ground. From these blows the borough recovered, and upon the ruins of the settlement arose a mediæval town wherein, for certain centuries, there reigned a measure of prosperity. The late Norman castle belonged to the twelfth century. It was a true "keep" and a stout border fortress. Within its walls were held the Courts, beneath its floors were hidden the dungeon, of the Stannaries. From the Commonwealth until two hundred years ago, the castle lay in ruins; then a partial restoration overtook it; Manor and Borough Courts were held there; prisoners again languished within its walls. But when Prince Town rose, at the heart of Dartmoor's central wastes, all seats of local authority were moved thither; Lydford Castle fell back into final neglect, and the story of many centuries was ended.

LYDFORD CASTLE

To-day this survival of ancient pride and power lies gaunt, ruined, hideous, and, in unvenerable age, still squats and scowls four-square to all the winds that blow. From its ugly window-holes to its tattered crown there is no beautiful thing about it, save the tapestry of nature that sucks life from its bones and helps to hide them. Grass and ferns, hawkweed, sweet yarrow, toadflax, and fragrant wormwood thrive within its rents and crevices; seedling ash and elder find foothold in the deep embrasures; ivy mantles the masonry and conceals its meanness. The place sulks, like an untamable and unlovely beast dying. It reflects to the imagination the dolours and agonies of forlorn wretches—innocent and guilty—who have pined and perished within its dungeons. Now these subterranean dens, stripped to the light, are crumbling between the thumb and forefinger of Time; their gloomy corners glimmer green with moss and tongues of fern and moisture oozing; briars drape the walls from which hung staples; wood strawberries, like rubies, glitter among the riven stones. Windows and a door still gape in the thickness of the walls; and above, where once were floors, low entrances open upon air. In the midst extends a square of grass; aloft, a spectator may climb to the decayed stump of the ruin, and survey Lydford's present humility; her church, dwarfed largely by the bulk of the castle; her single row of little dwellings; the dimpled land of orchards and meadows round about her; and the wide amphitheatre of Dartmoor towering semi-circular to the East.

Fifty years ago, as now, the village straggled away from the feet of the castle under roofs of grey thatch and tar-pitched slate. Many of the cottages had little gardens before them, and one dwelling, larger than the rest, stood with a bright, rosy-washed face, low windows and low brow of grey thatch, behind luxuriance of autumn flowers. To the door of it there led a blue slate path, and on either side smiled red phloxes, bell-flowers, tiger-lilies with scarlet, black-spattered chalices, and pansies of many shades. A little golden yew, clipped into a pyramid, stood on one side of the door; upon the other sat a man peeling potatoes.

Philip Weekes was short and square and round in the back. His black beard, cut close to the chin, began to turn white; his hair was also grizzled. His cheeks were red and round; his large grey eyes had a wistful expression, as of eyes that ached with hope of a sight long delayed. His voice, but seldom heard, was mournful in its cadence. Now Mr. Weekes dropped his last potato into a pail of water; then he picked up the pail, and a second, that contained the peelings. With these he went to the rear of his house. It was necessary to go out through the front gate, and as he did so a friend stopped him.

"Nice weather, schoolmaster," he said in his mild tones. "Very seasonable indeed. And I observe your son up at the ruin with a party every time I pass. He must be doing well, Mr. Weekes."

"Nothing to complain about, I believe; but Jarratt—to say it friendly—is terrible close. I don't know what he's worth, Mr. Churchward."

"I expect your good lady does, however."

The father nodded.

"Very likely. I ban't in all their councils."

The schoolmaster—a tall, stout man, with a pedagogic manner and some reputation for knowledge—made no comment upon this speech, but discreetly pursued his way. He stopped at the Castle Inn, however, for the half-pint of ale he always allowed himself after morning school. The little public-house stood almost under the castle walls; and beyond it rose a bower of ancient trees, through which appeared the crocketed turrets of St. Petrock's. Adam Churchward was a widower and enjoyed high esteem at Lydford. People thought more of him than the vicar, because though of lesser learning, he displayed it to better advantage and denied himself to none. He was self-conscious under his large and heavy manner, but he concealed the fact, and nobody knew the uneasiness that often sat behind his white shirt-front and black tie, when accident threatened the foundations of his fame.

As he emptied potato peelings into a barrel, there came to the master of this flowery garden a wild and untidy brown maid, easily to be recognized as the runaway Susan.

"Pleace, Uncle Phil, aunt says if you've done them 'taters she'd like 'em to see the fire, if us be going to have dinner come presently."

"They'm done," he said. "I be bringing of 'em."

A voice like a guinea-hen's came through the open door.

"Now, master, if you've finished looking at the sky, I'll thank you to fetch a dollop o' peat. An' be them fowls killed yet? You know what Mrs. Swain said last Saturday? Yours be the bestest fowls as ever come into Plymouth Market, Hephzibah,' she said. 'I'd go miles for such poultry; an' you sell 'em too cheap most times; but if your husband would only kill 'em a thought sooner, to improve their softness——' 'He shall do it, ma'am,' I said; but well I knowed all the time I might so soon speak to a pig in his sty as you—such a lazy rogue you be."

"I'll kill 'em after dinner—plenty of time."

"'Plenty of time'! Always your wicked, loafing way. Put off—put off—where's that gal? Go an' sweep the best bedroom, Susan. 'Plenty of time.' You'll come to eternity presently—with nothing to show for it. Then, when they ax what you've been doing with your time, you'll cut a pretty cheap figure, Philip Weekes."

Her husband exhibited a startling indifference to this attack; but it was the indifference that an artilleryman displays to the roar and thunder of ordnance. His wife talked all day long—often half the night also; and her language was invariably hyperbolic and sensational. Nobody ever took her tragic diction seriously, least of all her husband. His position in the home circle was long since defined. He did a great deal of women's work, suffered immense indignities with philosophic indifference, and brightened into some semblance of content and satisfaction once a week. This was upon Saturday nights, when his partner invariably slept at Plymouth. Her husband and she were hucksters; but since, among its other disabilities, Lydford was denied the comfort of a market, they had to seek farther for customers, and it was to Plymouth that they took their produce.

Every Friday Mr. Weekes harnessed his pony and drove a little cart from Lydford into Bridgetstowe, through certain hamlets. He paid a succession of visits, and collected from the folk good store of eggs, butter, rabbits, ducks, honey, apples and other fruit, according to the season. His own contributions to the store were poultry and cream. He had one cow, and kept a strain of large Indian game fowls which were noted amongst the customers of Mrs. Weekes. On Saturday the market woman was driven to Lydford Station with her stores, and after a busy day in Plymouth, she slept with a married niece there, and returned to her home again on the following morning.

This programme had continued for nearly forty years. On rare occasions Philip Weekes himself went to market; but, as his wife declared, "master was not a good salesman," and she never let him take her place at the stall if she could help it.

LYDFORD.

Hephzibah was a little, lean woman, with white, wild locks sticking out round her head, like a silver aureole that had been drawn through a bramble-bush. She had bright pink cheeks, a long upper lip, a hard mouth with very few teeth left therein, and eyes that feared nothing and dropped before nothing. She was proud of herself and her house. She had a mania for sweeping her carpets; and if at any moment Susan was discovered at rest, her aunt instantly despatched her to the broom. After a good market Hephzibah was busier than ever, and drove her niece and her husband hither and thither before her, like leaves in a gale of wind; if the market had been bad, the strain became terrific, and Susan generally found it necessary, to run away. Mr. Weekes could not thus escape; but he bowed under the tempest, anticipated his wife's commands to the best of his power, and contrived to be much in the company of his Indian game fowls. After each week of tragical clacking and frantic sweeping Saturday came, and the peace of the grave descended upon Mr. Weekes. During Saturday he would not even suffer Susan to open her mouth.

"'Pon Saturdays give me silence," he said. "The ear wants rest, like any other member."

While his wife's shrill tongue echoed about her corner of the market-place and lured customers from far, he sat at home in a profound reverie and soaked in silence. By eventide he felt greatly refreshed, and generally spent an hour or two at the Castle Inn—a practice forbidden to him on other days.

"Go," said Mrs. Weekes; "go this instant moment, afore dinner, an' kill the properest brace you can catch. If you won't work, you shan't eat, and that's common-sense and Bible both. Mrs. Swain said——"

Her husband nodded, felt that his penknife was in his pocket, and went out. The poultry-run stood close at hand at the top of Philip's solitary field. Sacks were nailed along the bottom of the gate, to keep safe the chicks, and a large fowl-house filled one corner. As the master entered, a hundred handsome birds, with shining plumage of cinnamon and ebony, ran and swooped round him in hope. But he had brought death, not dinner. A gallows stood in a corner, and soon two fine fowls hung from it by their long yellow legs and fulfilled destiny. Then Mr. Weekes girt an apron about him, took the corpses into a shed, spread a cloth for the feathers, sat down upon a milking-stool and began to pluck them.

Meantime the other occupant of his home had returned to dinner. Jarratt Weekes, the huckster's son, came back from his morning's work at the castle and called to his mother to hasten the meal.

"There's quite a lot of people about to-day," he said, "and a party of a dozen be coming up at three o'clock to look over the ruin."

"Then you must make hay while the sun shines," declared Mrs. Weekes.

Hephzibah's only child had now reached the age of forty, and the understanding between them was very close and intimate. Reticent to all else, he found his mother so much of his own way of thinking, that from her he had no secrets. She admired his thrift, and held his penuriousness a virtue. Despite her garrulity, Mrs. Weekes could keep close counsel where it suited her to do so; and neither her son's affairs nor her own ever made matter for speech. They enjoyed an inner compact from which even the head of the house was excluded. Jarratt Weekes despised his father, and failed to note the older man's virtues. The castle-keeper himself could boast a personable exterior; but he was mean, and his countenance, though not unhandsome, betrayed it. He loved money for itself, and had saved ever since he was a boy. His clean-shorn, strongly featured face was spoiled by the eyes. They were bright and very keen, but too close together. He looked all his years by reason of a system of netted lines that were stamped over his forehead, upon his cheeks and round the corners of his lips. He lent money, ran sheep upon Dartmoor, and was busy in many small ways that helped his pocket. He paid his mother five shillings a week for board and lodging; and she tried almost every day of her life to make him give seven-and-six, yet secretly admired him for refusing to do so. He was of medium height, and in figure not unlike his father, but still straight in the back and of upright bearing.

Jarratt sat down at the kitchen table, while his mother made ready a meal for him. The room was empty, and overhead sounded the regular stroke of Susan's broom.

"Glad you're alone," he said, "for I wanted to talk a moment. I saw Sarah Jane to Bridgetstowe yesterday. She'd come down with a message from her father. Sunday week she's going to take her dinner with us. Then I shall ax her."

Mrs. Weekes nodded, and for a moment her tongue was silent. She looked at her son, and a shadow of something akin to emotion swept over her high-coloured cheeks and bold eyes.

"What a change 'twill be! I suppose you'll take the house to the corner? Mrs. Routleigh can't hold out over Christmas."

"Yes, I shall take it. But there's Sarah Jane to be managed first."

"Not much trouble there. She ban't a fool. She'll jump at you."

"You're not often wrong; but I'm doubtful. Sarah's not like other girls. She don't care for comfort and luxury."

"Give her the chance! She's young yet. They all like comfort, and they all want a husband. Quite right too."

"She can have her pick of twenty husbands—such a rare piece as her."

"Them pretty ones all think that; an' they often come to grief over it. They put off choosing year after year till suddenly they find 'emselves wrong side of thirty, and the flat chits, that was childern yesterday, grown up into wife-old maidens. Then they run about after the men they used to despise. But the men be looking for something younger by that time. You men—the years betwixt thirty to forty don't hit you; and what you lose in juice an' comeliness, you make up at the bank. But ban't so with us. There's no interest on good looks—all the other way. These things I've told Sarah Jane myself; so be sure she knows 'em. You'm a thought old for her: that's my only fear."

"Would you go at it like a bull at a gate, or wind round it? She knows well enough what I feel. Why, I gived her a brooch that cost five shillings and sixpence come her last birthday."

"Dash at her! She's the sort that must be stormed. Don't dwell over-much on the advantages, because she's too young to prize 'em. Catch fire an' blaze like a young 'un. They like it best that way. Don't take 'no' for an answer. 'Twas a dash that caught me; though you'd never think it to see your father now-a-days."

He listened respectfully.

"I'm not the dashing sort, however."

"No, you ban't. Still, that's the best way with she. Many a woman's been surprised into saying 'yes.' Do anything but write it. Sarah Jane wouldn't stand writing. For that matter, 'tis a question if she can read penmanship. An ignorant girl along of her bringing up."

"Good at figures, however; for Gregory Friend told me so."

"What does he know about figures? Still, 'tis very much in her favour if true."

Mrs. Weekes now went to the window and looked out of it. Down the street stood an ivy-covered cottage where two ways met. Beside it men were working in the road.

"The water-leat will run through your back orchard, won't it?"

"Yes; I'd counted upon that. The new leat goes from one side to t'other. 'Twill be a great source of strength and improve the value of the property."

"The sooner you buy the better then—afore Widow Routleigh understands—eh?"

He hesitated a moment, then confessed.

"I have bought," he said.

"Well done you! Why didn't you tell me?"

"I was going to. But keep silent as the pit about it. Only me, an' her, and her lawyer knows. As a matter of fact, I bought before the leat got near the place. I knowed 'twas coming; they never thought of it."

"You'm a wonder!"

She looked at the house destined for her son and his bride.

"You won't be far off—that's to the good. You an' me must always be close cronies, Jar. Who else have I got?"

"No fear of that."

She went to the oven, put a stew upon the table, and lifted her voice to the accustomed penetrating note.

"Dinner! Dinner! Come, master! Us can't bide about all afternoon for you. Susan, get down house, will 'e, an' let me see the dustpan. I know what your sweeping be like—only too well."

Mr. Weekes received a volume of reproaches as he entered five minutes later, and took his place at the head of the table.

"I've been plucking fowls, an' had to wash," he said.

"Then I hope to God you chose the right ones. Mrs. Swain will have 'em the same size to a hair. If they come to table a thought uneven, her pleasure's spoilt. And the best customer I've got in the Three Towns. But what do you care...? Susan, you dirty imp, can't you... Tchut! If your parents don't turn in their graves, it ban't no fault of yours...!"

So she played chorus to the banquet. How Mrs. Weekes ever found time to eat none knew.

CHAPTER VI
WATTERN OKE

When Daniel Brendon stepped out of the world into church, a change came upon his spirit, and he had the power of absorbing himself in religious fervour. He lived under the permanent sense of a divine presence, and when life prospered with him and nothing hurt or angered him, the labourer's mind was cheered by the companionship of his Maker. Only if overtaken by a dark mood, or conscious of wrong-doing, did he feel solitary. The experience was rare, yet he faced it without self-delusion, and assured himself that when God forsook his heart, the fault was his own.

In a temper amiable and at peace he kept the Sunday appointment with Gregory Friend. During morning worship he had heard a sermon that comforted his disquiet, and served for a time to mask from his sight the ambitions proper to his nature. He had been told to do with his might the thing that his hand found to do; he had been warned against casting his desires in too large a mould; he had heard of the dignity of patience.

Brendon's mind was therefore contented, and as he strode through the evening of the year's work and marked the sun turn westward over a mighty pageant of autumn, he felt resignation brooding within him. Nature, for once, chimed with the things of his soul and blazoned a commentary upon the cherished dogmas of his faith.

He stood where the little Rattle leapt to Tavy, flung a last loop of light, and, laughing to the end of her short life, poured her crystal into a greater sister's bosom. Sinuously, by many falls, they glided together under the crags and battlements of the Cleeve; and the September sun beat straight into that nest of rivers, to touch each lesser rill that threaded glittering downward and hung like a silver rope over shelf of stone, or in some channel cut by ancient floods. Their ways were marked by verdure; by sphagnum, in sheets of emerald or rose, orange or palest lemon; by dark rushes, stiffly springing, and by the happiness of secret flowers. Heath and grey, granite shone together; a smooth, green coomb stretched beside water's meet, but beyond it all was confusion of steep hills and stony precipices. Over their bosoms the breath of autumn hung in misty fire, while strange, poised boulders crouched upon them threateningly and sparkled in the sun. Haze of blue brake-fern shimmered here and burnt at points to sudden gold, where death had already touched it. Light streamed down, mingling with the air, until all things were transfigured and the darkest shadows abounded in warm tones. The ling still shone, and its familiar, fleeting mantle of pale amethyst answered the brilliance of the sky with radiant flower-light that refreshed the jewels of the late furze by splendour of contrast. The unclouded firmament lent its proper glory to this vale. Even under the sun's throne air was made visible, and hung like a transparent curtain over the world—a curtain less than cloud and more than clarity. It obscured nothing, yet informed the great hills and distant, sunk horizon with its own azure magic; it transfused the far-off undulations of the earth, and so wrought upon leagues of sun-warmed ether that they washed away material details and particulars. There remained only huge generality of light aloft, and delicate, vague delineation of opal and of pearl in the valleys beneath.

The rivers, spattered with rocks and wholly unshadowed, ran together in a skein of molten gold. Behind the murmuring hills they vanished westerly; and though these waters gleamed with the highest light under the sky, yet even in the dazzling force of sheer sunshine, flung direct upon their liquid mirrors, were degrees of brilliance—from the pure and steady sheen of pools, through splendour of broken waters, up to blinding flashes of foam, where the sun met a million simultaneous bubbles and stamped the tiny, blazing image of himself upon each.

Sunshine indeed poured out upon all created things. It lighted the majesty of the hills and flamed above each granite tower and heather ridge; it brightened the coats of the wandering herds and shone upon little rough calves and foals that crept beside their mothers; it touched the solitary heron's pinion, as he flapped heavily to his haunt; and forgot not the wonder of Vanessa's wings, nor the snake on the stone, nor the lizard in the herbage. Each diurnal life was glorified by the splendour of day; and when there fell presently a cloud-shadow, like a bridge across the Cleeve, it heightened the surrounding brilliance and, passing, made the light more admirable. Upward, like the music from a golden shell, came Tavy's immemorial song; and it echoed most musical on the ear of him who, crowning this vision with conscious intelligence, could dimly apprehend some part of what he saw.

Daniel seated himself on rocks overlooking the Cleeve. His massive body felt the sun's heat strike through it; and now he stared unblinking upward, and now scanned the glen upon his right. That way, round, featureless hills climbed one behind the other, until they rose to a distant gap upon the northern horizon where stood Dunnagoat cot against the sky. Low tors broke out of the hills about it, and upon their summits, like graven images, the cattle stood in motionless groups, according to their wont on days of great heat.

Brendon rose presently, stretched himself, and, seen far off, appeared to be saluting the sun. Then he turned to the hills and passed a little way along them. His eye had marked two specks, a mile distant, and as they approached they grew into a man and woman.

DUNNAGOAT COT.

Gregory Friend, with his daughter, met Daniel beside a green barrow. He shook hands and remarked on the splendour of the hour. The peat-man had put off his enthusiasm with his working clothes. He wore black and appeared somewhat bored and listless, for the week-days only found him worshipping.

"He hates Sabbaths," explained Sarah. "To keep off his business be a great trouble to him; but he says as we must mark the day outwardly as well as inwardly. So he dons his black, an' twiddles his thumbs, an' looks up the valley to the works, but holds away from 'em."

She wore a crude blue dress that chimed with nothing in nature and fitted ill. Brendon, however, admired it exceedingly.

"'Tis very nice 'pon top of Wattern Oke, if you care to come so far," he said.

They returned to the place where Daniel had sat.

"I'll spread my coat for 'e, so as you shan't soil thicky lovely gown," he suggested to Sarah Jane.

"No call to do that, thank you. I'll sit 'pon this stone. I'm glad you like the dress. I put it on for you to see. My word, 'tis summer come back again to-day!"

The labourer was fluttered, but could think of nothing to say. Both men smoked their pipes, and Friend began to thrust his stick into the earth. They spoke of general subjects, then Daniel remembered a remark that the other had made upon their first meeting. He had no desire to hear more concerning peat; but his heart told him that the theme must at least give one of the party pleasure, and therefore he led to it. Moreover, he felt a strong desire to please Gregory, yet scarcely knew his reason.

"You was going to give me a little of your large knowledge 'bout Amicombe Hill, master," he said, after an interval of silence.

Mr. Friend's somewhat lethargic attitude instantly changed. He sat up briskly and his eyes brightened.

"So I was then; and so I will. To think that within eye-shot at this moment there's more'n enough fuel to fill every hearth in England! There's a masterpiece of a thought—eh? If people only realized that.... And Amicombe Hill peat be the very cream and marrow of it all—the fatness of the land's up there—better than granite, or tin, or anything a man may delve in all Dartymoor."

"Not a doubt of it—not a doubt," said the listener; but Sarah Jane shook her head.

"Don't you encourage him, Mr. Brendon, or I'll not have you up the hill no more. Ban't six days a week enough for one subject? Can't us tell about something different Sundays?"

"Plenty of time," answered her father. "Peat's a high matter enough in my opinion. If us knowed all there is to know about it, us should see nearer into the ways of God in the earth, I'm sure. There's things concerning Amicombe peat no man has yet found out, and perhaps no man ever will."

"On week-days he lives up to his eyes in the peat, an' 'pon Sundays he preaches it," said Sarah. "That is when any man's silly enough to let him," she added pointedly.

Her father began to show a little annoyance at these interruptions.

"You'd best to go and walk about, an' leave me an' Brendon to talk," he said.

"So I will, then, my dear," she answered, laughing; "an' when you've done, one of you can stand up on a rock an' wave his handkercher; then I'll come back."

To Daniel's dismay, she rose and strolled off. Friend chattered eagerly; Sarah Jane's blue shape dwindled, and was presently lost to sight.

For half-an-hour the elder kept up a ceaseless discourse; but, since Daniel did nothing more than listen, and scarcely asked a question to help the matter, Gregory Friend began to tire. He stopped, then proceeded. He stopped again, yawned, and relighted his pipe.

"That's just the beginning about peat," he said. "But don't think you know nothing yet. My darter knows more than that—ignorant though she is."

"Not ignorant, I'm sure. But—well, shall I tell her that, just for the present, we've done wi' peat, or would you rather——?"

Gregory felt that Brendon had fairly earned a respite and reward. Moreover, the sunshine was making him sleepy.

"Go an' look after her," he said. "An' come back to me presently. I'll have forty winks. Nought on earth makes me so dog-tired as laziness."

Daniel was gone in a moment, yet, as he strode whence the girl had disappeared, he found time to ask himself what this must mean. He had never looked round after a woman in his life. Women about a place made him uneasy, and acted as a restraint on comfort. He knew nothing whatever concerning them, and was quite content to believe the opinions of John Prout: that, upon the whole, a man might be better single. Yet this woman had interested him from the first moment that he saw her; he had thought of her not seldom since; he had anticipated another meeting with interest that was pleasure.

He crossed Wattern Oke, then looked down where Tavy winds beneath the stony side of Fur Tor. A bright blue spot appeared motionless at the brink of the river. Daniel, feeling surprise to think that she had wandered so far, hastened forward and, in a quarter of an hour, stood beside her. She smiled at him.

"I knowed you'd come for me," she said. "There was that in your face made me feel it. You was sorry when I went off?"

"So I was then."

"I rather wanted to see if you would be. It shows friendship. I like men to be friends with me. I often wish I'd been born a man myself—'stead of a woman. I'm such a big maiden, an' awful strong—not but what I look more than a fly beside you. You could pick me up in they gert arms, I reckon?"

"I suppose I could for that matter. I carried a pig yesterday—lifted un clean up an' got un on my back; but it took two other chaps to move it. 'Twas Agg and Tapson. 'Here, let me get to his carcase,' I said; an' I lifted it clear into the butcher's cart, while they two was wiping their foreheads!"

She nodded with evident approval.

Suddenly his slow mind worked backwards.

"All the same," he said, "I didn't ought to have mentioned your name in the same breath with a pig. 'Twas a hole in my manners, and I hope you'll overlook it."

Sarah Jane laughed.

"What a man! Where was you brought up to? Ban't many so civil in these parts."

"I was teached to be civil by my mother. But I know nought beyond my business—not like Mister Woodrow. He has grammer-school larning, an' London larning, and reads books that I can't understand a word about."

She told him of her own childhood, of her mother, of her few friends.

"Girls don't seem to like me," she said. "I hardly know above half-a-dozen of 'em. There's Minnie Taverner to Lydford, and Mary Churchward—nobody much else. Mary's brother's nearly as big as you be. But t'others I used to know, when I went to school, are all married or gone to service now."

"Very interesting," said Daniel. "I never had but one sister. She's down to Plymouth—a greengrocer's wife there."

They talked freely together, and presently rose and set out to rejoin Mr. Friend. Under their feet Daniel suddenly saw a piece of white ling, and stopped and picked it.

"May I make bold to ax you to take it?" he said. "'Tis an old saying that it brings fortune."

"Then I won't accept of it," she said. "Thank you all the same; but fortune's in the wind for me already; an' I don't want it very much. I'm happy enough where I be along with my father."

"Tell me about the fortune," he said, flinging the heath away.

Thereupon she reminded him that, despite her masculine aspirations and amazing frankness, she was a woman after all.

Her eyes fell, then rose to his face again. A glorious, gentle, gentian blue they were.

"You want to know such a lot, Mr. Brendon," she said.

He was crushed instantly, and poured forth a string of apologies.

"You all do it," she answered. "I don't know what there is about me; but you chaps get so friendly—I feel as if I'd got about fifty brothers among you. But there's things you can't tell even brothers, you know."

"I'm terrible sorry. Just like my impudence to go pushing forward so. I deserve a clip on the side o' the head—same as my mother used to box my ears when I was a little one, an' hungry to ax too many questions."

Mr. Friend was awake and ready to walk homeward. Daniel accepted an invitation to tea, and accompanied them.

They ascended slowly by the steep channels of the Rattle-brook, and presently Gregory rested awhile.

"I can't travel same as once I could," he explained. Then he moralized.

"The world's an up an' down sort of place, like this here fen," he said. "Some holds the good and evil be balanced to a hair, so that every man have his proper share of each; but for my part I can't think it."

"The balance be struck hereafter. That trust a man must cling to—or else he'll get no happiness out of living," answered Daniel; and the other nodded.

"'Tis the only thought as can breed content in the mind; yet for the thousands that profess to believe it, you'll not find tens who really do so."

"I'm sure I do," asserted Brendon.

"At your time of life 'tis easy enough. But wait till you'm threescore and over. Then the spirit gets impatient, and it takes a very large pattern of faith to set such store on the next world that failure in this one don't sting. If I am took from yonder peat works afore their fame be established to the nation, I shall go reluctant, and I own it. There'll be nought so interesting in Heaven—from my point of view—as Amicombe Hill."

"You'll have something better to think of and better to do, master."

"Maybe I shall; but my mind will turn that way, and I shall think it terrible hard if all knowledge touching the future of the place be withholden from me."

"We shall know so much of things down here as be good for our peace of mind, I reckon?" ventured Daniel.

"'Twould be wisht to have all blank," declared Sarah Jane. "Take the mothers an' wives. What's the joy of heaven to them if they don't know things is going well with their children an' husbands?"

"'Tis almost too high a subject for common people, though I could wish for light upon it myself," said her father.

"Of course they know!" cried the woman. "Don't you believe as mother holds us in her thoughts and watches our goings? Such a worrying spirit as hers! Heaven wouldn't be no better than a foreign country, where she couldn't get letters, if you an' me was hidden from her."

Daniel felt uneasy.

"Knowing what she knows now, she would be content to leave it with God," he said.

"Not her," answered Sarah Jane. "A very suspicious nature, where those she loved was concerned."

"True. My wife could believe nought but her own eyes. She was built so. That's why she never would share my great opinions of Amicombe Hill. A very damping woman to a hopeful heart. A great trust in arithmetic she had; but for my part nought chills me like black figures on white paper. You can't draw much comfort from 'em most times."

"I'm like her," said Sarah Jane. "All for saying what I think. Father here's a dreamer."

"Hope's very good to work on, however; I hold with Mr. Friend there."

"Not so good as wages," said Sarah Jane.

"Sometimes in my uplifted moments I've wondered whether truth's made known to my wife now, and whether, looking down 'pon Dartymoor, she knows that I was right touching Amicombe Hill, and she was wrong," mused Gregory.

"Perhaps she knows she was right and you are wrong, my old dear," suggested Sarah Jane.

But her father shook his head.

"I ban't feared of that," he answered.

After a cup of tea, Daniel Brendon made a faltering proposal, and met with a startling reply.

"I wonder now, if you and Miss here would take a walk along o' me next Sunday?" he asked. "I'll meet 'e where you please. And I'm sure I should be terrible proud if you could lend me your company."

"I can't—not next Sunday," declared the girl. "'Tis like this: I'm going to Lydford to spend the day along with the Weekes family. And Jarratt Weekes be going to ax me to marry him."

Dan's eyes grew round.

"Good Lord!" he said, with surprise and reverence mingled.

"That's what the man's going to do, if I know him. 'Tis all planned out in his mind. I could most tell the words he'm going to say it in—knowing him so well as I do."

A natural question leapt to Brendon's lips, but he restrained it. He wanted to ask, "And shall you take him?" but resisted the burning temptation. This news, however, was a source of very active disquiet. He drank his tea, and was glad when Gregory Friend broke the silence.

"And you'll do well to think twice afore you say 'yes,' Sarah Jane. A successful and a church-going man. A good son, I believe, and honest—as honesty goes in towns. But——"

"I'd never get a husband if I waited for you to find one, faither."

"Perhaps not. Good husbands are just as rare as good wives."

"Then—then perhaps Sunday after——?" persisted Brendon, whose mind had not wandered far from the mam proposition.

"Perhaps," answered Sarah Jane. "You'm burning to hear tell what I shall say to the castle-keeper—ban't 'e now?"

"Who wouldn't be—such a fateful thing! But I know my manners better than to ax, I hope."

"I don't know what I'm going to say," declared she. "D'you know Jarratt Weekes?"

"No, I don't."

"Does anybody to Ruddyford?"

"Most of 'em know him."

"What do they say about him?"

Brendon hesitated.

"Can't answer that: wouldn't be fair to the man."

"You have answered it!" she said, and laughed.

A moment later he took his leave and strode slowly over the hills. So absorbed was he, that he did not watch his way, and presently tripped and fell. The accident cleared his mind.

"This be a new thing in me," he thought. "That blessed, lovely she's bewitched me, if I know myself! She'll take the man, no doubt. And yet—why? Such a face as that might look as high as a farmer at the lowest."

CHAPTER VII
PLAIN SPEAKING

A peace of unusual duration brooded over the dwelling of Philip Weekes; for his wife had gone to market on Saturday morning, but instead of returning home, according to her custom, in time for Sunday dinner at Lydford, she continued at Plymouth until the evening.

He basked in silence like a cat in the sun; but a few friends were coming to drink tea, and Susan already made preparations for the event.

Elsewhere, Sarah Jane, who was spending the day at Lydford, sat in a secret place with Jarratt Weekes and heard the things that she expected to hear.

The old castle was not opened to visitors on Sunday, but Jarratt kept the keys, and, after dinner, took Sarah to his fortress and offered her marriage within its mediæval walls. She wore her blue dress; he held himself a grade above those men who habitually don black upon the seventh day, and was attired in a mustard-coloured tweed suit.

"We'll come aloft," he said. "There's a window opens to the west, and I've put a seat there for visitors to sit in and look around. 'Tis out of sight of the street, and will shield you from the east wind that's blowing."

He offered to assist her up the wooden stairway, but she made as though she did not see and followed him easily.

Presently they sat together, and he sighed and twirled his gold watch-chain in a fashion to catch her eye. She noted his well-shaped and strong hand.

"I dare say you think I'm a happy man, Sarah Jane," he began abruptly.

"I don't think anything about you," she answered; "but all the same, you ought to be. Why not? Everything goes well with you, don't it? Mr. Huggins met me in the village as I came along. He says that you've bought Widow Routleigh's beautiful house at the corner, and only wait for her to die to go into it. And the new leat will run right through the orchard."

"So it will. But don't think that was a chance. I worked it all out and knew the water must come that way. I'd bought the ground, at my own price, before the old woman even guessed the water was coming. I say this to show you how far I look ahead."

"Of course you do—like Mrs. Weekes. You've got her great cleverness, no doubt."

"That's true, and I could give you many instances if you wanted them. But, all the same, there's much worth having that money won't buy. Ban't the root of all good, as some think, any more than 'tis the root of all evil, as other fools pretend—chiefly them as lack it. Money's all right, but not all-powerful. You, for instance—I know you well enough to know that money don't count for everything with you."

Sarah Jane plucked a spray of sweet wormwood that grew out of the wall within reach of her hand. She bruised it and passed its pale gold and silver thoughtfully under her nose.

"I'd dearly like to have money," she said.

"You would?"

"Dearly. I'd sooner have a hoss of my own to ride than most anything I can think of."

"A very fine idea, no doubt. And very fine you'd look upon one."

She smelt the wormwood, then flung it through the window and turned to him.

"But I wouldn't sell myself for that. I've never thought out the subject of money, and maybe never shall. Faither's always on about it; but 'tis only a sort of shadowy fancy in his mind, like the next world, or China, or any other place beyond his knowledge. Money's just a big idea to him and me. But I doubt if we had it, whether we should know how ever to manage it."

"Your father's no better than a wild man," said Jarratt impatiently. "So full of foggy hopes and opinions—nought practical about any of 'em. Now I'm nothing if not practical; and more are you. 'Tis that I've felt about you ever since you was wife-old. But what d'you think of me? People have an idea nobody could make much cash in a place the size of Lydford. Let 'em think so. But I tell you, Sarah Jane, that 'tis often the smallest stream holds the biggest trout. And I tell you another thing: I love you with all my heart and soul. There's nobody like you in the world. You're a rare woman, an' pretty as a picture to begin with; but that ban't all. You've got what's more than good looks, and wears better, and helps a busy man on his way. You'd not hinder a husband, but back him up with all your strength. Never was a body with less nonsense about her. In fact, I've been almost frightened sometimes, to think how awful little nonsense there is about your nature—for so young a woman. It comes of living up-along wi' nought but natural things for company. There's no lightness nor laughter up there."

He stopped for breath; but she did not speak. Then he proceeded.

"Not that I blame you for being so plain-spoken. 'Tis often the best way of all, an' saves a deal of precious time. And time's money. You only want a little more experience of the ways of people, to shine like a star among common women, who sail with the wind and always say what they think you'll best like to hear. But that's nought. The thing I want to say is that I love you, Sarah Jane, and there's nothing in life I'd like better than to make a beautiful home for you, with every comfort that my purse can afford in it. And a horse you certainly shall have; an' I'll teach you how to ride him. You're a thought too large for a pony, but a good upstanding cob—and a pleasant sight 'twould be."

"Nobody could say fairer, I'm sure."

"Then will you have me? I'm not good enough, or anywheres near it. Still, as men go, in these parts, you might do worse—eh?"

"A lot worse. What does your mother think about it?"

"She would sooner I married you than anybody—'if I must marry at all.' That was her view."

"Why marry at all, Jarratt Weekes? Ban't you very comfortable as you are?"

"Not a very loverly question," he said, somewhat ruefully. "I'm afraid you don't care much about me, Sarah Jane."

"I don't like your eyes," she answered. "I like the rest of you very well. And, after all's said, you can't help 'em."

"There 'tis!" he exclaimed, half in admiration, half in annoyance. "What girl on God's earth but you would say a thing like that to a man that's offering marriage to her? To quarrel with my eyes be a foolish trick all the same. You might so well blame my hair, or my ears, or my hands."

"Your hand is a fine, strong-shaped sort of hand."

"Take it then," he cried, "and keep it; an' give me yours. Let me run my life for you evermore; and for your good and for your betterment. I'm tired of running it for myself. I never knew how empty a man's life can be—not till I met you; and there's the cottage, crawled over with honeysuckle, and the swallows' nests under the eaves, and the lovely orchard and all! All waiting your good pleasure, Sarah Jane, the moment that old woman drops."

"I don't reckon I could marry you—such a lot goes to it. Still, I'll be fair to you and take a bit of time to think it over."

"You've got two strings to your bow, of course—like all you pretty women?"

"No, I haven't. Yet—well, there's a man I've seen a few times lately. And I do take to him something wonderful. There's that about him I've never felt in no other man. Only, so far as I know, he don't care a button for me. He may be tokened, come to think of it. I never heard him say he wasn't. I never thought of that!"

She sat quite absorbed by this sudden possibility, while Jarratt Weekes stared angrily at her.

"You'll puzzle me to my dying day," he growled. "If any other female could talk such things, we'd say it was terrible unmaidenly in her; but you—naked truth's indecent in most mouths—it seems natural to yours. Not that I like you the better for it."

"He's a huge man, and works at Ruddyford. He's been drawing peat these last few days, and I've had speech with him, an' gived him cider thrice. To see him drink!"

"Damn him and his cider!" said Weekes, irritably. "A common labourer! You really ought to pride yourself a thought higher, Sarah Jane. What would your poor mother have said?"

"She done exactly the same herself. And a prettier woman far than me when she was young. For faither's often told me so. He's raised himself since he was married. So might this chap. All the same, I don't know whether he gives me a thought when I'm out of his sight."

"I think of nought but you—all day long."

"And widows' houses, and a few other things! Of course you do. You haven't got up in the world by wasting your time."

"Say 'yes,' and be done with it, Sarah."

"I'll leave it for a round month, then I'll tell you."

"You'll leave it—just to see what this hulking lout on the Moor may do."

"Yes. But he's not a lout. I'm certainly not going to take you till I know if he cares for me. If he does, I'll have him, for he's made me feel very queer—so queer that it can't be anything but love. And if he don't ax inside six weeks, I'll take you."

"You're the sort to go and tell him to ask you," he said, bitterly.

"No, no! I won't do that. I'm a very modest woman really, though you don't seem to think so. I'll not run after him."

"You're mad to dream of such a thing."

"Very likely; but there 'tis. Now us had better go back-along. I promised Mr. Weekes to pour out tea for him this evening afore I went home."

"I'll walk back with you."

"No need. Father's going to meet me on the old tram-line. He's down to Lake to-day."

They returned to the cottage of Philip Weekes, and found the company assembled.

There were present a very ancient, wrinkled man with a thin, white beard, called Valentine Huggins. As happens sometimes, he had out-lived his Christian name, and an appellation, proper to youth, seemed so ridiculous applied to a veteran of fourscore that nobody ever called him by it but one or two of his own generation, who did not mark the humour. Mr. Huggins was the oldest inhabitant of Lydford, and could count numerous grandchildren, though his own sons and daughters were nearly all dead. Adam Churchward, the schoolmaster, and his daughter Mary completed the gathering. He was large, hairless, ponderous, and flatulent; she nearly approached beauty, but her mouth was thin, and her voice served to diminish the pleasure given by her bright, dark face. The tone of it sounded harsh and rough, and when she spoke two little deep lines at their corners increased the asperity of her lips.

"I suppose we may say, in the words of the harvest hymn, that 'all is safely gathered in,'" remarked Mr. Churchward, as he drank his tea. "A good harvest, the work-folk tell me—or, rather, their children." He lifted his protuberant, short-sighted and rather silly eyes upward, to the conventional angle of piety.

"A very good harvest, I believe," admitted Philip, "and good all round—so the missis brought word from market last week."

"I trust the operations of sale and barter have been all that you could wish," added Mr. Churchward.

"Nothing to grumble at—very good markets," declared Philip, "though my partner never will admit it. Still, figures speak, and though she may pretend to lose her temper, I always know. Her pretences ban't like the real thing."

"No pretence about it when Aunt Hepsy's in a right-down tantara of a rage," said Susan.

"An unusual name—a Scriptural name," remarked the schoolmaster. "Has the significance of the name of 'Hephzibah' ever struck your mind, neighbour? It means, 'my delight is in her.'"

"So I've been told," answered the husband, drily. Indeed, his tone silenced the other, and, perceiving that he had apparently struck a wrong note of suggestiveness, Philip made haste to speak again.

"Nobody ever had a more suitable name, I'm sure. This house wouldn't be this house without her."

Jarratt Weekes and Sarah Jane now returned, and the subject was dropped by implicit understanding.

"I hope your great son, William, be well," said Sarah to the schoolmaster.

"Very well indeed, I thank you," he answered. "I could wish he had a little of his parent's zeal for toil, but he lacks it."

"Why for did he give up his shop work?" she asked.

"To be honest, it was rather undignified. For my son to fill that position was not quite respectful to me. He insisted upon it, but after a time, as I expected, found the duties irksome. I was not sorry when he changed his mind and returned to his painting."

"All the same, he's eating his head off now," said Mary Churchward.

"I shouldn't say that," declared William's father. "He helps me with the elder scholars. I have little doubt that some outlet for his artistic energies may soon be forthcoming. He has even an idea of going abroad."

"Do they still call him the 'Infant'?" asked Mr. Weekes.

"I believe so. How time flies with those who work as we do! Tempus fugit, I'm sure. It seems only yesterday that he was really an infant. In these arms the physician placed him some hours after his birth, with the remark that never had he introduced a fatter boy into the world."

"So I've heard you say," answered the huckster. "Give Mary another cup of tea, please, Sarah Jane."

"Yes," continued Mr. Churchward. "At first I had reason to believe that William would develop very unusual intellects. His childhood was rich in evidences of a precocious mind. But it seemed, in the race between brain and body, that after a struggle the physical being out-distanced the mental spirit. If I am becoming too subtle, stop me. But you may have observed that men above six feet high are seldom brilliantly intelligent."

"I know a chap who is, however," said Sarah Jane. "A young man bigger than your son, Mr. Churchward, but a very great thinker in his way—so my father says."

Mr. Churchward raised his eyebrows incredulously, and at the same moment bowed.

"Bill's sharp enough, and father knows it," said Mary Churchward. "He's horrid lazy; that's all that's the matter with him. If he had to work, 'twould be a very good thing for him."

"The questions that child used to ask me!" continued Adam. "Why, I believe it is allowed that I can reply to most people—am I right, Huggins?"

"Never yet knowed you to be floored," replied Mr. Huggins, in an aged treble. "There's the guts of a whole libr'y of books packed behind your gert yellow forehead, schoolmaster."

"Thank you, Huggins," said Mr. Churchward, with dignity. "Thank you. Truth has always been your guiding star since I have known you, and though your words are homely, they come from the heart. Pass me the sally-lunns, Susan, and I'll tell you a good thing Will said when he was no more than seven years old."

Mr. Churchward selected a cake, nibbled it, then waved it.

"Stop me if I have narrated this narrative before. I was giving the child a lesson in divinity. Indeed, at one time I had thoughts of the calling for him, but his mind took another turn."

"He don't believe in nothing now—nothing at all," said Mary, "except himself."

"You wrong him there. He is a Christian at heart, if I am any student of character. But as a child, he indulged in curious doubts. 'God made all things, I suppose, father?' he asked me on the occasion I speak of. 'Yes, my little man, He did indeed,' I answered. 'He made hell then?' he asked. 'Surely,' I admitted. 'Was it for Mr. Satan and his friends, so that they would all be comfy together?' he asked. 'No doubt that they should be together; but far from "comfy,"' I replied; 'and take good care, my child, that it shall never be said of you that you are one of those friends.' Now is not that a remarkable instance of juvenile penetration?"

"An' very good answers you made the nipper, I'm sure," said Mr. Weekes.

Here Jarratt changed the subject abruptly, and conversation ranged over matters more generally interesting than the schoolmaster's son.

"The water will be into Lydford come June next or a little later, they tell me," said the keeper of the castle. "I was showing the head engineer over the ruin last week—for all the times he'd been here he'd never seen it—and there's no doubt at all that the work will be done by next spring."

"Then I must begin to think of our preparations," answered Adam. "You may be aware that I am responsible for the idea that something of an exceptional nature shall be carried out to mark the arrival of the water. I mentioned it to the vicar two or three months ago, and he—well, if I may say so, he showed a coldness."

"Always is cold unless he thinks of a thing himself," said Jarratt.

"I'm afraid you have hit off his character in a nutshell. However, I am not to be shaken where I think the good of Lydford is concerned. 'It's a year too soon to begin thinking of it,' said the vicar to me; but I explained that these things must be taken in time and carefully thought out. 'Do it yourself then, since you're so set upon it,' he said. 'Then you'll have no objection to my proceeding in the matter, your reverence?' I asked, 'for I should like everything ex cathedrâ and in order.' 'Oh, do what you like, only don't let it be anything ridiculous,' he answered, in his unkind, off-hand style. 'I'm not the man to bring ridicule on Lydford or myself, I believe,' I replied, in my haughty way."

"Had him there," chuckled Mr. Huggins.

"And with that I just bowed myself out."

"Us'll do it without troubling him, then," declared Philip Weekes. "The matter's very safe in your hands, neighbour."

"I think it is. Without self-praise—a thing I have never been accused of—I think it is. My own idea is matured, but I am quite prepared to hear that a better one is forthcoming."

"You should call a meeting and have a committee," suggested Jarratt.

"My idea was to have the committee without the meeting. For instance—we here assembled—why can't we elect a committee?"

"'Twill be too hole-and-corner," said Jarratt.

"Not at all, not at all. This is neither a hole nor yet a corner, but the house of one of the burgesses of Lydford. We represent various interests. I stand in propriâ personâ for advancement and intellectual attainments, and the arts and sciences, and such-like; Jarratt Weekes is for business and mercantile pursuits and commerce; Mr. Huggins—well, he's the oldest inhabitant. 'Twould be a very right and proper thing to have him on the committee."

"Should like nothing better, souls," declared Mr. Huggins. "Talk I won't, but there must be some to listen."

"We ought to have a few more—seven or eight in all," said the younger Weekes. "Then we'll get through a scheme of some sort and hear what you've got to say, schoolmaster."

"The vicar will be very like to put his spoke in it if your ideas don't meet his views," suggested Philip, and Mr. Churchward's large pendulous cheeks flushed a delicate pink at the idea.

"I'm sorry to hear you say that. I hope you're wrong. He gave me a free hand, remember."

Presently the company separated. Mr. Huggins was going by Sarah Jane's way, and he walked beside her; the Churchwards went to evening worship; Jarratt disappeared with his own anxious heart; and Mr. Weekes, hiding all evidence of inward thought, harnessed his pony and drove off to Lydford, to meet the train which was bringing his wife and her baskets home from Plymouth.

CHAPTER VIII
A REPRIMAND

Now Nature thundered the hymn of the autumnal equinox; ancient trees waved their last before it; men told of a cloudburst, at midnight, over the central Moor. Every river roared in freshet; the springs overflowed and rolled down the grassy hills, where, in summer, no water was; cherry-coloured torrents, under banks of yellow spume, tumbled into the valleys; storm followed upon storm, and the fall of the year came in no peaceful guise, but like a ruthless army. Not until the epact did peace brood again, and fiery dawns, pallid noons and frosty nights gave the great waste sleeping into the hand of winter.

Daniel Brendon settled to his work, and personal regrets that his position should be so unimportant were thrust to the back of his mind for the present by a greater matter. He was in love with Sarah Jane Friend, and knew it. To him fell the task of drawing peat with horse and cart from Amicombe Hill, and his journeys offered not a few opportunities of meeting with the woman. Once at her home, once in the peat works, he spoke with her. On the latter occasion she had just taken her father's dinner to him, and after Gregory was settled with the contents of a tin can and a little basket, Sarah proposed to Daniel that she should show him certain secret places in this ruin. The peat works had been her playground as a child, and she knew every hole and corner of them; but since silence and failure had made the place a home, Sarah chose rather to shun it. The very buildings scowled, where they huddled together and cringed to Time to spare them. She noted this, and felt that the place was mean and horrible, but with Dan beside her, ancient interests wakened, and she took him to see her haunts.

"I had a dear little cubby hole here," she said, and showed him a great empty drum, from which one side had fallen.

"This used to be filled with peat and be set spinning, so that the stuff should get broke up and dried," she explained; "but now 'tis as you see. I've often crept in there and gone to sleep by the hour. 'Tis full of dried heather. An old man that used to work with father spread it for me five years ago. He's dead, but the heather's there yet."

There was ample room within the huge drum even for Brendon. They sat together for a while, and ever afterwards in his thought the place was consecrated to Sarah Jane. He believed that she liked him, but her fearless attitude and outspoken methods with men and women made him distrustful. So weeks passed, and he gradually grew to know her better. After the Sunday at Lydford he went in fear and trembling, but she said nothing about the matter, and when he asked Mr. Friend behind her back whether indeed his daughter was engaged, the peat-master told him that it was not so.

"As became her father, I axed her," he said, "an' in her usual style she told me all about it. Jarratt Weekes offered to wed, and set out his high prospects in a very gentlemanlike manner; but she said neither 'yea' nor 'nay' to him. I axed her why not, seeing as she've a great gift of making up her mind most times—more like a man than a woman in that respect. But she said for once that she wasn't sure of herself. She'll see him again in a month or so, and then he'll have his answer."

"Thank you, I'm sure; it's very impertinent of me presuming to ask," said Daniel, "but, to be plain with you, Mr. Weekes, I'm terrible interested."

"So am I," answered the father. "She's a lovely piece—even I see that. But it ban't a case where a parent will do any good. She'll take her own line, and want none to help her decide. If she was to go, I don't think I should bide here."

"Would you tear yourself away from the works?"

"Go from the works! Not likely. But I should leave Dunnagoat Cottage and live up there."

"Good powers! You wouldn't do that?"

"Why for not? Ban't no ghosts there?"

Daniel shrugged his shoulders.

"Your darter won't let you do it," he said.

With a full mind, the labourer pursued his days. How to speak and tell her that he loved her was the problem. He tried to fortify himself by reviewing his own prospects, but they lent no brightness at this moment. He had fifty pounds saved, and was getting five-and-twenty shillings a week—unusually good wages—but the authority he desired seemed no nearer. Strange thoughts passed through his brain, and he referred them to the powers in which he trusted.

"What's God up to with me now, I wonder?" he asked himself. The words were flippant, but the spirit in which he conceived them profoundly reverent. The suspense and tension of the time made him rather poor company for Agg, Lethbridge, and the widowed Joe Tapson. Indeed, between himself and the last there had risen a cloud. Brendon was dictatorial in matters of farm procedure, and by force of character won imperceptibly a little of the control he wanted. His love for work assisted him; not seldom he finished another's labour, simply because he enjoyed the task and knew that he could perform it better than his companion. Agg and Lethbridge were easy men, and Daniel's hunger for toil caused them no anxiety. They let him assume an attitude above them, and often asked him for help and advice; but Tapson, on the other hand, developed a very jealous spirit. He was ignorant and exceedingly obstinate. He had always regarded himself as second in command, under Mr. Prout, and to find this modest responsibility swept from him became a source of great annoyance. Twice he ventured to command Daniel, and once the new man obeyed, because he approved Tapson's idea; but on the second occasion he happened to be in a bad temper, and told Joe to mind his own business and not order his betters about. The rebuff rankled in the elder's bosom, and he puzzled long what course to pursue. Agg and Lethbridge were no comfort to him. Indeed, both laughed at the widower's concern.

"You silly old mumphead," said the genial Walter Agg; "what be you grizzling at? Any man's welcome to order me about, so long as he'll do my work for me."

"That's sound sense, an' my view to a hair," he declared. "The chap's got strength for five men—then let him do the work, since he's so blessed fond of it. He's a very fine man, an' my master any day of the week, though he don't get much better money. For my part I think he ought to, and I told him so; an' he was so blessed pleased to hear me say it, that he shifted two tons of muck, which was my job, while I looked on, like a gentleman, till master come into the yard!"

Agg roared with laughter. His laugh echoed against the stone walls of the farm, and Hilary Woodrow liked to hear it.

"Right you are, fatty! Dan's a very good sort, and long may be bide here."

"You be lazy hounds, and not worth a pin, the pair of you," answered the little man with the goat's beard. "But I'll not stand none of his high-handedness. Next time I orders him about and he pretends he don't hear, I'll have him up afore Mr. Woodrow."

"More fool you, Joe," replied Agg.

But Mr. Tapson's intention was not fulfilled, for the matter took a sensational turn, and when he did carry his tribulations to head-quarters, they were of a colour more grave than he expected.

On a day in late November Tapson was leading a cart piled with giant swedes through one of the lowest meadows of the farm. The mighty roots faded from white to purple, and drooping, glaucous foliage hung about their crowns. Following the cart, or straggling behind it to gnaw the turnips as he scattered them, came fifty breeding ewes. There was a crisp sound of fat roots being munched by the sheep. The air hung heavy, and the day was grey and mild. Looking up, the labourer saw Daniel Brendon approaching.

"Now for it!" thought Mr. Tapson, and his lips framed an order. "I'll tell the man to go and fetch me a fork from the byre."

He was about to do so, when Brendon himself shouted from a distance of fifty yards, and, to Tapson's amazement, he found himself commanded.

"Get down out of thic cart an' lend a hand here, Joe. I want 'e!"

Every line of the widower's brown face wrinkled into wrath. His very beard bristled. He growled to himself, and his solitary eye blazed.

"You want me, do 'e?" he shouted. "You'll be ordering up the Queen of England next, I suppose?"

"Don't be a fool, and come here, quick."

Mr. Tapson permitted himself a vulgar gesture. Then, chattering and snorting like an angry monkey, he continued to throw swedes upon the meadow. Brendon hesitated and approached. As he did so the widower remembered his own intention.

"You go and get me a fork from the byre; that's what I tell you to do—so now then!" he said, as Daniel arrived.

It happened that the big man was not in a good temper. Private anxieties fretted him exceedingly. His way was obscure. He had prayed to be shown a right course with respect to Sarah Jane, yet there dawned no definite idea. He loved her furiously, and half suspected that she liked him, but the miserable uncertainty and suspense of the time weighed upon him, so that his neighbours shook their heads behind his back and deplored his harshness.

"Be you going to do my bidding, or ban't you, Joe Tapson?" inquired Daniel.

"Not me, you overbearing peacock! Who be you, I should like to know, to tell me I'm to stir foot? Prout's the only man above me on this farm."

Brendon considered. He was about to express regret that he had hurt Mr. Tapson's feelings, but Joe spoke again, and the listener changed his mind.

"You'm a gert bully, like all you over-growed men. Good God A'mighty! because I had bad luck with my wife, and was very down-trodden in my youth, and lost an eye among other misfortunes, be that any reason why the first bull of Bashan as comes along should order me about as if I was the dirt under his feet? Never was such a thing heard of! You'm here to work, I believe, not to talk an' give yourself silly airs."

"If that's your opinion us had best go to master," said Daniel.

"This instant moment, and the sooner the better!" answered the other.

He took his horse and cart to the gate, hitched the reins there, and walked beside Brendon into the farmyard. Neither spoke until it happened that Hilary Woodrow met them. He was just going out riding, and Agg stood by with a handsome brown mare.

Daniel and Joe both began to speak together. Then the master of Ruddyford silenced them, sent Agg out of earshot, and bade Joe tell his tale.

"'Tis which he should betwixt me and this man here," began the elder. "Be he to order me about, like a lost dog, or be I set in authority over him? That's all I want to know, your honour. Agg and Lethbridge do let him do it, but I won't; I'll defy him to his face—a wise man, up home sixty year old, like me! 'Tis a disgrace to nature as I should go under him—as have forgot more than this here man ever knowed, for all his vainglorious opinions!"

Woodrow nodded.

"That'll do for you, Joe. Now go about your business. I'll speak to Brendon."

Tapson touched his forehead and withdrew reluctantly. He had hoped to hear his enemy roughly handled; he had trusted to gather from his master's lips a word or two that might be remembered and used with effect on some future occasion. But it was not to be. He returned to the swedes, and only learnt the issue some hours afterwards from Daniel himself.

Unluckily for Brendon, Woodrow also was not in a pleasant mood this morning. He suffered from general debility, for which there was no particular course, and to-day rheumatism had returned, and was giving him some pain in the chest and shoulders. He rode now to see his medical man, and felt in no mood for large sympathy or patience.

"A few words will meet this matter," he said. "When you came here I told you that the sheep-dogs would be expected to obey you, and nobody else."

"Can't we ax each other to——?"

"Be silent till I have spoken. You're too fond of raising your voice and pointing your hand. Do your work with less noise. In this farm Prout's head man, and Tapson comes under him. With sane people there's no question of authority at all. All work together for the good of the place, and all are well paid for their trouble. But, since you seem so anxious to command, let me tell you that I won't have it. You're the last to come, and you're the least among us. You do your work well enough, and I've no personal fault to find; nor yet has Prout; but if you're going to be too big for your shoes, the quicker we part the better for both of us."

Brendon grew hot; then Sarah Jane filled his mind, and he cooled again. He made a mighty effort and controlled his temper. He was not cowed, but spoke civilly and temperately. Woodrow himself had kept perfectly cool, and his example helped the labourer.

"Thank you, sir," said Dan. "I see quite clear now. I should be very sorry indeed to leave you, and I'm very wishful to please you. You shan't have nothing to grumble at again."

"That's a good fellow. Don't think I'm blind, or so wrapt up in my affairs that I don't watch what's doing. You hear Tapson say all sorts of things about me, for he's not very fond of me, though he pretends to be. But trust Prout before the others. He knows me. I'm not a godless man, and all the rest of that rot. Only I mind my own business, and don't wear my heart on my sleeve. I'm ill to-day, or perhaps I should not have spoken so sharply. Still, I take back nothing. Now tell Agg to bring my horse to the uppingstock. Lord knows how I shall mount, for my shoulders are one ache."

"I'll help you, please," said Daniel; and a moment later he assisted Hilary Woodrow into the saddle. The farmer thanked him, groaned, then walked his horse quietly away.

Agg looked after his master.

"Was he short with 'e? Us have to keep our weather eyes lifting when he's sick."

"Not at all," answered Brendon. "He only told me a thing or two I'd forgotten."

"Ban't much you forget, I reckon," answered the red man. Then he went his way, and Brendon returned to his work and his reflections.

He felt no anger at this reprimand. He was surprised with himself to find how placid he remained under it. But he knew the reason. His subordinate position was as nothing weighed against the possibility of leaving Sarah Jane. He quickly came to a conclusion with himself, and determined, at any cost of disappointment, to speak to her and ask her to marry him. If she refused, he would quit Ruddyford; if she accepted him, he would stay there—for the present. His mind became much quieted upon this decision, and he found leisure to reflect concerning his master. Woodrow had been curiously communicative at the recent interview, and his confession concerning himself interested his man. From Daniel's point of view the farmer's life was godless, for he never obeyed any outward regulations, and openly declared himself of no Christian persuasion. Yet his days were well ordered, and he neither openly erred nor offended anybody. Brendon wondered upon what foundation Mr. Woodrow based his scheme of conduct, and whither he looked for help and counsel. That man can trust reason to sustain his footsteps he knew not; and, indeed, at that date, to find one of Woodrow's education and breeding strongly sceptical of mind was a phenomenon. Such, however, had been his bent, and, like many others who turn strongly by instinct from all dogmas, the farmer yet found ethics an attractive subject, and sharpened his intellect daily with such books as upheld reason against faith. He was self-conscious concerning his unorthodox opinions, but secretly felt proud of them. Fifty years ago, to be agnostic was to be without the pale. None trusted Woodrow, and religious-minded folk resented his existence. The local clergymen would not know him. Perhaps only one man, John Prout, stood stoutly for him in the face of all people, and declared that he could do no wrong.

That night Brendon smoked his pipe in a cart-shed and spoke to Mr. Tapson.

"I'm sorry I ordered you to come to me, Joe," he said, "and I'm sorrier still that I didn't get the fork when you told me to do it. Master's made all clear to me. Prout's head man and you're second—so there it stands; and you shan't have no call to find fault again."

"Enough said," answered the other. "Us must all stand up for ourselves in this world, Brendon, because there's nobody else to do it. Therefore I up and spoke. But I'm very desirous to be friends, and I know your good parts."

"So be it then," answered Daniel.

CHAPTER IX
THE COMMITTEE MEETS

Mr. Churchward found some difficulty in arranging a representative committee to consider the water leat celebrations. Many refused to join him—among others Woodrow. To the master of Ruddyford he wrote, in his expansive way, and begged that he would "represent the outlying agricultural interests"; but Hilary declined, and John Prout consented to fill his place.

"'Tis all smoke and wind, no doubt, but 'twill please the man," he said.

There met together at the schoolmaster's house Jarratt Weekes, old Valentine Huggins, Noah Pearn—the landlord of the Castle Inn—John Prout, and two others—men of repute in Lydford. They were the miller, Jacob Taverner, and the postmaster, a weak and pink-eyed person, called Nathaniel Spry. Him Mr. Churchward regarded as a satellite, and patronized in a manner at once unctuous and august.

Weekes opened the proceedings while the men were getting out of their coats.

"Is Squire Calmady coming?" he asked.

"I regret to say that he is not," answered the schoolmaster. "I approached him in propriâ personâ by letter, and he replied that the meeting would be very safe in our hands. I hope you all think the same. Anyhow, we have paid him the compliment; we can do no more."

"There's no gentlefolks on the committee, then?"

Mr. Taverner, who was a stout radical, and saturated with class prejudice, resented this suggestion.

"Gentle or not gentle, Jarratt Weekes, we are all pretty solid men, and know how to behave, I believe."

"I vote Mr. Churchward into the chair, neighbours," said the postmaster. "Then we shall have wisdom over the committee."

Adam bridled, but held up his hand in a deprecating manner.

"I want no power—nothing of the sort. I'm only your servant in this matter. But since somebody must—in fact, I leave myself in your hands."

"'Tis your own house, so you'd better take the lead, and I'll second the motion," declared John Prout.

"Shall us smoke, or would it be out of order?" asked the landlord of the Castle Inn.

Spry looked imploringly at the schoolmaster. He hated the smell of tobacco, and suffered from a nervous cough. But Mr. Churchward liked his pipe as well as smaller men, and he declared for smoke.

"I've a new box of 'churchwardens' in this drawer," he said. "I beg the committee will make free with them. Now—but where's Mr. Norseman? Speaking the word 'churchwarden' reminded me of him. We want him to complete the committee."

The official in question almost immediately joined them. Henry Norseman was a swarthy, black-bearded, sanctimonious man, the factor of important estates, and churchwarden of the people.

They sat round the table that Mr. Churchward had cleared for them. Pens and paper were arranged upon it, and the box of clay pipes stood in the midst. A fire burnt on the hearth, and two oil lamps gave light.

"'Tis a very comfortable committee, I'm sure," said Mr. Huggins, stretching for a tobacco pipe, and bringing a flat metal box from his trouser pocket to fill it.

Mr. Churchward opened the proceedings.

"What we have to decide is the sort of thing we are going to do the day the water comes into Lydford. I have my idea, but I am quite prepared to submit it sub rosa. If anybody has a better one, I shall be the first to agree thereto. Now my notion is a public holiday and a procession. This procession should start from the high road and walk through Lydford down to Little Lydford, and back. At a foot's pace 'twould take not above three hours."

"And I propose that the procession stops at the Castle Inn on the way back," said Mr. Pearn.

"Why?" asked Jarratt Weekes, pointedly, and the publican bristled up.

"Why do people stop at an inn?" he asked, in his turn. "That's a damn silly question, if ever I heard one."

"You're out of order," retorted Weekes. "Though, of course, we all know very well your meaning."

Mr. Pearn lifted his chin very high.

"All right, all right!" he said. "What d'you want to open your mouth so wide for? I suppose every man of this committee has a right to be heard? And I suppose we've all got an axe to grind, else we shouldn't be here?"

"You'll have your say in due course, Noah Pearn. Don't waste the committee's time interrupting," said Mr. Prout.

But the landlord proceeded.

"I'm the last to want to waste anybody's time—know the value of time too well. But this I will say, that I'll give a free lunch to fifty people on the day—three courses, and hot joints with the first—if 'tis understood everyone pays for his own drinks. That's my offer; take it or leave it. So now then!"

"I was going to say 'order'; but, since you submit a definite proposal, I won't, Mr. Pearn. Well, that seems a patriotic offer—eh, gentlemen?"

Mr. Churchward glanced about him and caught Mr. Henry Norseman's eye.

"We ought to vote on that," declared the churchwarden.

"I'm against liquor, as you know, and cannot support the idea, owing to conscience."

"No good voting—I don't care what you vote, and I don't care for a teetotaler's conscience. Take it or leave it. Free lunches for fifty, and them as drinks pays for it," repeated Mr. Pearn.

"I advise the committee to accept that," said the miller Taverner. "'Tis a public-spirited offer, and if Noah does well out of the beer, why shouldn't he? In fact, I second it."

"Are we agreed?" asked Mr. Churchward, and all held up a hand but Mr. Norseman. The publican resented his attitude as a personal slight.

"Don't you come to fill your belly with my free lunch, then—that's all, for you won't be served," he said, furiously.

"Have no fear," answered the other. "I never support drink, and never shall, Mr. Pearn."

"Order—order!" cried the chairman. "The free lunch is carried. Now, neighbours, please hear me. The first thing to decide is, shall we or shall we not have a procession? If any man can think of a better idea, let him speak."

"Impossible," declared the postmaster. "You have hit on exactly the right thing, Mr. Chairman. A procession is the highest invention the human mind can ever reach on great occasions, and the most famous events of the world, from ancient times downwards, are always marked so. The bigger the affair, the longer the procession. History is simply packed full of them."

"Hear, hear, Spry!" said Mr. Taverner. "And what the postmaster says is true. 'Tis always a solemn sight to see men walking two by two, whether they be worthies of the nation or mere convicts chained together."

The committee, without a dissentient voice, agreed to a procession, and Mr. Churchward was much gratified. He bowed from the chair.

"I'm very pleased to have been the humble instrument of expressing your views in a word, gentlemen," he began. "And now arises the question of the nature of the pageant."

"The Goose Club might walk, for one thing," suggested Mr. Prout.

"It shall," answered Pearn; "as the president of the Goose Club, I can promise that."

"And I'll speak for the Ancient Dartymoor Druids—Lydford Branch," said Jacob Taverner. "But I won't promise the banner if the day be wet. It cost three pounds, and wouldn't stand weather."

"That's very good to begin with, I'm sure," declared Mr. Churchward; then old Huggins made his first contribution to the debate.

"Us must have brass moosic, souls. There's nought like trumpets—they'll carry off anything. I mind when Jimmy Briggs was buried there never was a poorer funeral—nought but five or six humble creatures behind, and me an' a few other men to carry him. But, just as we stopped to change hands, what should go by but a four-hoss coach! And the guard didn't see us, and blowed a sudden blast as would sartainly have made us drop the carpse if he hadn't been on the ground for the moment. But there 'twas; it gave a great grandeur to the scene, and comforted the mourners, like the Trump of Doom."

"Brass music, of course," said Jarratt Weekes. "The Okehampton Yeomanry band is very good, and their black and silver uniforms would look fine in the show."

"They'll cost a pot of money; that's the worst of them," said the postmaster.

"As to that, my dear Spry, we must, of course, approach the subject in a large and hopeful spirit. When everything is arranged I shall propose an appeal to the district. I have thought of this, too, and, I consider, if we can collect thirty to forty pounds, that should cover all expenses."

Mr. Churchward it was who spoke.

"You'll never get as much as that—or half of it," declared Weekes. "What are you going to show 'em for the money?"

"That's the point. I propose——"

Mr. Taverner, who had been whispering with Mr. Pearn, interrupted.

"Excuse me if I'm not in order; but I beg to say that talking's dry work, and I should like for to ask if we may send round to the 'Castle' for a quart or two?"

The chairman looked round him.

"Agreed," said Mr. Prout. "I second that."

"I've no objection in the world," declared Mr. Churchward.

"I should have suggested it myself," remarked Noah Pearn; "but for obvious reasons, gentlemen, I couldn't."

They applauded his delicate feeling, and Adam spoke to Nathaniel Spry.

"If you walk across to the inn, Nat, you'll find my son in the bar for certain," he said. "Just tell him to fetch over two quarts of mild, and write it down to me; and put on your overcoat afore you go, for the night is sharp."

"And I'll ask for a bottle of lemonade, if there's no objection," added Mr. Norseman.

The publican was mollified at this order, and while the others talked, he turned to his former enemy.

"I hope you'll not think twice of what I said, and come to my free lunch with the rest, Henry Norseman," he said.

The other nodded.

"Plenty of time, plenty of time," he answered.

"I can't sit cool and hear beer attacked," explained Mr. Pearn. "As a man of reason, you must see that."

"Certainly, certainly. I'm not unreasonable—I'm large-minded even over beer, I believe. If we must have it—poison though it is—let us have it good."

"And the man who says he ever got bad beer at my house is a liar," concluded Mr. Pearn.

The schoolmaster rapped on the table and resumed the main discussion.

"Now as to this procession," he began. "We must have features. I believe I am allowed some claim to be original in my ideas. Indeed, I am too much so, and even in the scholastic line, find myself rather ahead of the times. But with a procession, what can be better than originality? Then I say we must have some impersonations—historic characters—to walk in procession. They must be allegorical and typical, and, in fact, emblematical."

He paused for breath just as Mr. Spry returned.

"William's going to bring the beer to the committee in five minutes," said he.

"You've missed some long words, postmaster," remarked Mr. Taverner. "The chairman here have got a great thought for the procession. 'Twill be better than the riders,[[1]] if it can be done."

[[1]] The Riders, a circus.

"Allegorical, emblematical, et hoc genus omne," declared Mr. Churchward, and mopped his forehead.

"Trust schoolmaster to make a regular, valiant revel of it," said Mr. Huggins. "'Twill be very near as good as Wombwell's beast show, if the committee only stands by Mr. Churchward to a man."

"Have you thought who the great characters should be?" asked Henry Norseman doubtfully.

"I may have done so, churchwarden," answered the chairman; "but that's for us in committee. We must argue upon it. I invite you all to give your ideas; and what poor knowledge of history I may possess is at your service."

"St. George for one," said Jarratt Weekes; and everybody looked at Mr. Churchward.

He considered and nodded his head with gravity. The propriety of the idea was obvious; but Adam disliked the younger Weekes and grudged him credit.

"The patron Saint of England—eh? Well, there's no objection to him, certainly," he said, but without enthusiasm; and Jarratt instantly made his annoyance clear.

"Objection to St. George! Good God! I should think there wasn't any objection to St. George! What next, I wonder? If St. George ban't done, I'll leave the committee—so I tell you. You're glumpy because you didn't think of the man yourself!"

"Order! order!" cried Mr. Churchward. "Far be it from me to cast any slur on the name of St. George. But there are so many other notable personages to consider; and as I am of opinion that we can hardly manage more than five or six at the outside, I felt doubtful. However, let us have St. George by all means. Those in favour of St. George will kindly signify the same in the usual manner."

St. George was honoured with a unanimous vote. Then Mr. Huggins piped in.

"And do let's have the old dragon, souls! St. Garge be nought without un."

"The dragon! The dragon, Huggins?" asked Mr. Churchward. "That's rather startling—and yet——"

"Certainly the dragon," said Mr. Prout firmly; "Valentine's right there."

"'The Infant' might play dragon very nice," suggested Mr. Pearn.

"Not he—too fat," declared Jarratt Weekes brutally; and William Churchward's father was a good deal hurt.

"My son is not too fat," he answered. "William may be stout; but I imagine a prosperous dragon would be stout, for that matter. Wasn't St. George's dragon prosperous before he met St. George, Mr. Spry? You are pretty well up in the heathen mythology, I believe."

"Thank you for that kind word, schoolmaster," said Spry. "And he was prosperous. 'Tis all a fable, but——"

At this moment William Churchward entered. He was a huge, burly, thick-necked young man with a voice that surprised the ear. One expected a solemn bass and heard a ridiculous treble. William had bulbous, pale grey eyes like his father's, flabby chops and a small mouth.

"There's your beer," he said. "Good Lord! you old blades be going it seemingly."

"Would you play dragon, 'Infant,' and let St. Garge pretend to stick his spear into 'e?" asked Mr. Huggins.

"Us be going to have a dragon in the procession—with St. George a slaying of him, William," explained Mr. Prout.

"The 'Infant' will never let himself be slain, I'm afraid?" murmured Nathaniel Spry in a questioning voice.

"You'll have to wear an outrageous tail, William, an' cover your gert carcase in glittering scales," declared Jacob Taverner. "But I don't think you ought to be allowed to roar, for you haven't got a dragon's voice—to say it kindly."

"'Twill come down to play-acting in a minute," grumbled Mr. Norseman, "and I don't hold with that, I warn the committee. If there's to be any May games of that sort, I'll lay it afore the vicar."

William helped himself to a churchwarden from the box, and prepared to depart.

"You'm a rare old rally," he said; "and all drunk a'ready, I should think."

"You don't follow the course of the argument, my son," explained his father. "However, I'll make it clear at another time. You mustn't stop now, because we are in committee, and it would be irregular."

"Bless you nose, I don't want to stop!" replied William. Then he made a mock bow and departed.

When he had gone, Mr. Spry, who was a peace-loving man, proposed that they should drop the dragon. Pearn, Prout and Taverner, however, held out for the monster loudly, and Mr. Huggins supported them.

"Better have a sub-committee to decide," sneered Jarratt Weekes; but Mr. Churchward ignored his satire and put the question to the vote.

"Dragon romps home!" cried John Prout.

"St. George and the Dragon have passed the committee," announced Mr. Churchward. "And now, gentlemen, perhaps you'll kindly help yourselves."

There was an interval of clinking glasses and bubbling liquor. A smell of beer permeated the chamber.

"All's going wonderful well," sighed Mr. Huggins. "I hope we haven't nearly finished yet."

Presently the discussion was resumed.

"With your permission, I will now myself submit a character," said the chairman, "and it is no less a solemn figure than the patriarch Moses."

"Your reasons?" asked Jarratt Weekes sharply.

Mr. Churchward flushed, but was not disconcerted.

"Moses brought forth water from the rock. It would be symbolical and religious to have him in the procession. We've brought forth water from the rock. There you are—an allegory in fact."

"You couldn't have hit on a higher idea in history, schoolmaster," asserted Nathaniel Spry.

"There's no offence?" asked Mr. Norseman. "You're sure there's no offence, schoolmaster? You know what his reverence is."

"I do," answered the chairman. "And I also know what I am. I believe that, when it comes to decorum, Mr. Norseman, I am generally allowed to be facile princeps. If I am wrong I hope somebody will correct me."

Jarratt Weekes uttered a contemptuous sound into his glass as he drained it; then old Huggins spoke.

His voice was tremulous, and he evidently laboured under great suppressed excitement.

"I do beg and pray of the committee as you'll let me be Moses, souls! I'm old enough—up home fourscore to a week—just the man's age when he denied and defied King Pharaoh. An' my beard's a regular Moses beard; an' I'm accounted wise to the eye, so long as I keep my mouth shut. 'Twould be the first and last act of note that ever I should do, an' a very fine thing to be handed down in my favour for my grandchildren to remember."

There was an awkward silence. Mr. Prout and the schoolmaster whispered aside, Mr. Norseman and Mr. Taverner shook their heads.

"Let him—let the old blid do it," said John Prout under his breath. "Might be a gracious act. He couldn't mar it, if he said nought."

Mr. Spry also whispered into the chairman's ear.

"Does he bear himself straight enough in the back? That's my fear. And the stone tables—he'd droop to the ground under them."

Mr. Huggins pleaded again.

"I'd wear the holy horns on my brow and everything; and many a married man would rather not. But 'tis nought to me."

"I had thought to write speeches in character for the emblematical people, and perhaps some verses," said Churchward; whereupon the face of the aged Huggins fell.

"Don't ax me to say nought," he begged. "Even as 'tis, if I walk as Moses, I shall be sweating for fear under my sacred coat; and if I had to tell a speech, I should disgrace myself and the company without a doubt."

"I'm against speeches altogether," declared Jarratt Weekes; "and so's Mr. Norseman here. We won't have no play-acting and no chattering of silly verses."

Mr. Churchward glared at his foe, and Weekes glared back and poured out more beer. The chairman thought of certain rhymes already in his desk, and Mr. Spry, who knew of these rhymes, cast a timorous and sympathetic eye at his gloomy friend.

"Schoolmaster's made some beautiful speeches, that nobody here could mend, for he's been so very good as to let me read them," he said.

But the sense of the meeting was for a dumb show; Mr. Huggins had his way and became self-conscious and nervous from that moment. Like greater men, he won his ambition and lost his peace of mind for evermore.

Sir Francis Drake, who brought water from Dartmoor to Plymouth, was suggested by the postmaster and agreed upon with enthusiasm; then Mr. Churchward proposed a Druid and Mr. Spry seconded, but Norseman protested.

"No heathen—no heathen!" he said. "'Twould be a reproach and make us a byword. Let's have St. Petrock—him that our church be named after. He might travel side by side of Moses, and keep the show well within Christianity."

"St. Petrock is good," declared Adam Churchward. "St. Petrock is a thought worthy of you, Norseman. Spry and I will consult our books about him. I second that, certainly."

The drink was done, and Mr. Pearn, aware that his part in the debate had sunk to nothing, advanced an idea.

"Why for shouldn't us have a lady hero? How would it be, Mr. Chairman, if Jezebel, Queen of Sheba, went among 'em?"

"Jezebel wasn't Queen of Sheba," answered several voices simultaneously.

"Not?" exclaimed the publican. "There now! If I didn't always think she was."

"You should read your Bible better, Noah Pearn," said Mr. Norseman; "and I object to women displaying themselves in the show at all."

"Churchwarden's right: don't have no women," advised John Prout. "They'm not fitted in their intellects to stand the strain of a public procession without getting too overbearing. They'm better kept under, in my opinion. You might lift up some comely maiden and turn her head for all time by it."

"If we had a queen at all, it should be Queen Elizabeth," said Mr. Churchward.

"Why?" asked Weekes.

"To walk along with Sir Francis Drake," answered the postmaster promptly. "That's sound history and sound sense."

"Don't have no queens," urged Mr. Prout. "Mark me, they'll spoil all with their giggling and nonsense."

"How be the heroes going to travel?" inquired Taverner. "For my part I think a hay-wain would be best. They'll get in a jakes of a mess if they go afoot down to Little Lydford. You know what the road is, even in dry weather."

"C[oe]teris paribus," answered Mr. Churchward thoughtfully.

"Very likely," admitted Taverner, "but, all the same, a hay-wain will be best."

Then it was that Jarratt Weekes allowed his gathering anger to bubble forth in a very acute explosion.

"Why the hell can't you talk English?" he asked the chairman. "I'm sick to death of your bumbling noise. Whenever you don't know what the deuce to answer a man, you fall back on some jargon, that may be Latin, or may be gibberish more likely. You don't know any more than us what your twaddle signifies; but you know we can't laugh at you, and so you're safe to pretend a lot of larning you haven't got. What does c[oe]teris paribus mean, anyway?—I ask you that afore this committee, and I will be answered!"

The chairman grew red and blew a heavy blast through his nostrils. Mr. Spry cried out "Shame—shame!"; Mr. Huggins was frightened.

"The committee is adjourned," answered Adam very haughtily. "And for the benefit of those who have so little education, and who envy those who may be better endowed in that respect, I may remark that c[oe]teris paribus means—it means, in the manner in which I employed it, that the question of a hay-wain shall be decided at the next meeting. And that is all I have to say, except that I expect an apology."

"And all I have to say is that you won't get one," answered Mr. Weekes very rudely.

The company rose, and a date having been appointed for future deliberations, every man prepared to go on his way.

Jarratt Weekes refused to apologize, despite efforts on the part of Prout and Norseman to make him do so. He persisted in the display of a very ferocious temper, and expressed grave doubt as to whether he should again join the committee. None pressed him to do so.

"A beautiful meeting," said Mr. Huggins to Mr. Taverner, who saw him home. "I'm sure I hope I shall be spared to see many more such afore the great day cometh."

CHAPTER X
"DARLING BLUE-EYES!"

Daniel Brendon asked Sarah Jane to marry him on an afternoon in November, when the wind blew like a giant from the west, and the life of the Moor slept.

They sat in a nook of Great Links Tor, looked at the world outspread beneath them, and listened to the hiss of the wind, as it flogged heath and stone and chattering rushes. A million tiny clouds dappled the sky with pure pearl, and far beneath this apparently motionless cloth of silver was woven another cloud-pattern of darker tone, where tattered vapour fled easterly across heaven before the roaring breeze. This rack sank to earth's surface, swept the Moor, and, when it reached the crowns of the land, swallowed them. Thus a world of wild movement and music filled the lower air and throbbed upon the wilderness, while the upper chambers of the sky were bright and still. Some faint sunlight pierced the cirrus, but its radiance was caught by the turmoil below and hardly reached these lovers, where they sat sheltered from the riotous breath of the wind.

GREAT LINKS

Daniel had asked for a half-holiday, and Sarah met him by appointment in this most lofty, most lonely place.

He had rehearsed his words many times until his brain whirled. By night the statement was clear, and phrases that seemed good to him thronged up from heart to tongue. With day they vanished, and now, on the threshold of the supreme moment, not a shadow of all his fine ideas remained. The wind from the Atlantic swept the last thought away. He sat by her, heaved immense sighs, panted dumb as the stone and heather, fixed his gaze upon her placid face.

"You'm blowing like the wind's self," said Sarah.

"I know I be," he answered. "There's times when I find mouth-speech terrible difficult, and this be one of them."

She knew very well what Daniel must now find words to tell her, but for once love was stronger than herself. When a halting blacksmith had nearly choked with a proposal in the past, she had helped him out of his misery as swiftly as possible, so that there might be little delay before the fatal word fell on his ears; but to-day the case was altered. She enjoyed the discomfort of her dear one's struggle, because her answer must presently make him forget his tribulation, as a warm fire makes us forget battle with the cold air outside.

"You don't talk enough to be very clever at it," she said. "'Tis the little, peart men talk best, like the small birds sing best. You gert big chaps croak like the crows—just now and again. You can't keep it up."

"Very true, I'm sure. But I don't want to croak now, God knows. If I was to put it in shape of a prayer, 'twould come easy, for you'd be surprised how my words slip out then. It loosens the tongue something wonderful to ax God for anything. He helps."

"You don't say your prayers out loud, however—else everybody to Ruddyford would hear 'em—with your gert voice."

"No—I whisper 'em. But no man can pray to anybody but his Maker. So it's cruel difficult."

"Who is it you'm fretting to speak to, then? Be you shamed to do it? Be it an uncomely thing?"

"No, no—'tis a very every-day thing; and yet not that—'tis a—— Would I say anything to you that weren't comely?"

"To me?"

"To you—yes."

"Whatever should you have to say to me?"

"Things as I haven't got the language for. There's words—like 'marriage,' for instance—that be an awful mouthful to spit out. Worse than having a tooth drawed. Yet there's no other word for it."

"And what's the hard word you can't bring yourself to say?"

"Look here—listen. There are some things that I can say, and they'll do for a start. I'm a terrible poor man. I've only got fifty pound stored up, but it goodies and it will be fifty-four ten by next March. I get twenty-five shillings a week; and that's very tidy indeed for me. Yet I'm worth it—not to despise myself—and I've great hopes of getting up higher. You'll think I'm a very own-self man, to keep on about myself so much."

"Not at all. 'Tis cruel interesting."

"Very kind to say so."

"Well, what next?"

"Should you reckon that was a promising case, or maybe you don't?"

"'Tis a very common state of things—save for the fifty-four pounds ten."

"You'd reckon that was to the good, then?"

"Every penny of it."

"It took some saving, Sarah Jane."

"I lay it did, Daniel Brendon."

"And I'm putting by a nice bit every week now."

"So you ought to be. You never know."

There was silence between them, but the wind ceased not. Then she relented and made it easy for him.

"I say you never know; because presently you'll be sure to see a girl that you'll like. No doubt you think not; but you will."

"I have—I have!"

She hardened her heart again.

"Ah! So soon? Well, if I may give you advice, you lie low till that fifty's up in three figures. Then—very like she'll take 'e, if nobody better comes in the meantime."

She looked at him and saw his face grow long and his jaw droop.

Then she suddenly threw her arms round him.

"You dear, great monster!" she said.

"Eh—what! Good God!" cried the man; and his emotion heaved up, slow and mighty, like the swing of a wave. He could say nothing; but he kept her face close to his and kissed her pale hair; then his arms tightened round her, and she felt the immense strength of them, and the great uplift of his ribs against her breast.

"I can't let 'e go; I'll never let 'e go again, I do believe," he said at last.

She knew he was unconsciously bruising her white body, but let him hug.

"My darling Blue-eyes!" he cried out, "what have I done to deserve this?"

"Made me love you."

"Think of it—think of it! When did you begin?"

"When did you?"

"First moment that ever I set eyes on you. When I walked down-along, after seeing you and drinking the cider you poured out for me, I knocked my knees against the rocks, like a blind sheep, for I couldn't think of nothing but your lovely hair."

"'Tis too pale. What d'you suppose I said to myself when I seed you first?"

His arm had settled to her waist. She rubbed her ear against his cheek.

"I said, 'I'll get that chap to take off them little funny three-cornered whiskers, if I can. They spoil the greatness of his beautiful, brown face."

"Did you think that—honour bright?"

"Honour bright, I did."

"I'll chop 'em off afore I see you again!"

He kissed her on the mouth.

"I never thought I could be so happy as this, Daniel," she said.

"'Tis almost too much," he admitted. "I doubt if any two was ever heart an' soul together like this afore. Feel me—fire—fire—burning like the bush in the wilderness, and yet not burning away! An' Him up above the clouds—to think it all out for us and plan it so loving and merciful! Bless God for His great goodness, darling Blue-eyes! This be all His work and His thought."

She showed no religious enthusiasm.

"Leave God till after," she said. "Go on burning now. Love me, hug me. There'll be black and blue bruises on my arms to-morrow."

"I'll make you love God in a way you haven't come to yet, Sarah Jane."

"Don't drag God in now," she said. "Talk to me, cuddle me. Tell me about what we're going to do when we'm married. Think of it all round—the astonishment—the fun. My father first—and then the castle-keeper. He'll have the flesh off your gert bones for this! Talk—talk—hug me tight and talk!"

"I want to think—I want to think," he said.

"Don't," she answered. "Feeling is better than thinking any day."

They lived through an hour as though it had been a moment. They did not feel the gathering dusk; they did not hear the wind. The rain fell presently, and to Sarah it seemed to hiss as it touched Daniel's cheek.

She leapt up at last.

"Now us'll go straight home and tell father."

"To-day—must we?"

"In course. You needn't fear it. It won't surprise him over much."

As they returned, he spoke again of the goodness of his watchful Creator, and moralized upon it.

"He does so much for us—He is sleepless—always watching and thinking for us worms.... And what can we do to pay Him? Nothing. We can only thank Him in our hearts every hour of the day."

Sarah Jane was silent a moment—then broke out suddenly.

"I don't want you to fawn on God about me, Daniel."

He started.

"What do you say, my darling dear?"

"Us don't think all alike there. I hate a mean spirit in a man. Not that you've got one—far, far from that. But I hate even a dog that cringes; and maybe God thinks the same of a man that does."

"Can we cringe to the Almighty?"

"The Giver's more than the gift to you, perhaps?"

"Nought on earth could be more than the gift, and well you know it! But——"

"I've given myself to you. I've done it myself—out of my own heart," she cried almost passionately.

He did not argue the point, but put his arms round her again. Yet he pondered as they passed on to Dunnagoat Cottage; and presently she startled him once more.

Mr. Friend took the news in a spirit very stoical.

"It had to come: 'twas only a question of time. I've always knowed that," he said. "I'm going to bargain for a fair spell of keeping company afore you do the rash deed. You catched fire from each other the first moment you met, I do believe. But sometimes the love that's soon ripe is soon rotten. So you'll just larn a bit about each other and we'll talk of marrying presently, when there's a foundation of understanding and knowledge built up between you."

"I know Dan to the very soul of him," said Sarah Jane. "I've read him day by day like a book of large, easy print; and he knows me—better than I know myself—don't you, Daniel?"

Brendon grinned doubtfully.

"I know you're the best, beautifullest wonder of a woman as ever I met with; and I know that I ban't worthy to tie your shoe-string; and that's about all I do know," he said.

"Exactly so!" declared Gregory. Then he took his daughter's face between his hands and kissed her.

"Bless you, you bowerly maid. You know nought about her, man; and I—her own parent—don't know much more; and she herself—what do she know, but that she's born—and loves you? There's as much we don't know, and she don't know, behind them blue eyes of hers, as there is behind the blue sky. Mark that; an' the Lord bless you, I'm sure; and if all goes well, I shall be pleased to have you for a son-in-law."

"I hope you'll never get no cause to regret them words, Mr. Friend. And, God helping, I'll Be a useful son to you as the years go on."

"That's a very proper thing to say. And if I have any opinion in the matter, 'tis this, that you won't take her too far off from me. She must bide fairly close. She's all I've got, and I couldn't go on without seeing her from time to time."

"That I will promise."

They fell into long silences while Gregory's daughter made tea; then they ate and drank and talked more freely again.

The lovers began to plan daily meetings; and Sarah Jane allowed herself to think deliciously of all the friends to whom this great news must be broken. Daniel remarked that they were mostly of his sex, and remembered that she had told him how her friendships with women were few.

"Every Dick, Tom, and Harry on the country side is to know about it seemingly," he said with a comical expression. "I hope they'll take the hint anyhow, and the less we see of 'em the better henceforward."

Then it was that she astonished him again, and the humorous note was changed abruptly in his mind, though not in hers.

"You men—so greedy you be—like a dog with a bone. 'Tis all or none with you."

He stared. It sounded an unmaidenly speech to his ear.

"By God! I should think so! All or none indeed. We don't share sweethearts, I believe."

She enjoyed his tragical face.

"'Twould be a poor look out for them as tried to come between me an' my gert monster," she said.

"It would be."

"An' for me too, I reckon?"

"Yes," he admitted. "But don't be telling such nonsense—or thinking such folly. You've done with all men but me for evermore. The Lord help any man or woman who ever came between us in deed or thought, if I catched word of it."

She nodded.

"They'd be dust afore your wrath."

Mr. Friend left them presently and went to a little room on the ground floor of Dunnagoat cot, where he pursued his business of testing peat for tar and gas. He never wearied of this occupation. Then, while Sarah Jane washed up the tea things, Brendon made an excuse to leave her and spoke with his future father-in-law.

"Can 'e lend me a razor, master?" he said.

"A razor? Yes. I don't use 'em of late years, but it happens I've got one. What for? Have you changed your mind and want to cut your throat for being a fool?"

"No, indeed. I've only just begun to live; but she don't like my whiskers."

"Ah! Take 'em off, and she'll want 'e to grow 'em again in a week. Wear a hard hat and she'll order a billycock; put on black gaiters and she'll cry out for yellow. God help you, poor giant of a man! You'll hear more about yourself from her fearless lips in the next fortnight, than ever you've found out yet all your life."

"The razor be—where?"

"Up in my sleeping chamber, in a little drawer under the looking-glass."

"Thank you very much, master."

"They'm like the false gods o' the Bible: they think nought of axing the men to gash themselves with knives. The biggest fool of a woman as ever cumbered earth can always be clever at inventing tortures for the men."

"'Tis all very well; but if I take Sarah Jane, you'll have to marry again yourself, Mr. Friend," said Daniel.

"Not me. I had one good one. I drew a prize, though she was always wrong about Amicombe Hill. Ban't in reason to expect two prizes."

Presently Daniel appeared with shaven cheeks before Sarah Jane. He left her to discover the loss, and she did so in an instant.

"My stars! if it isn't as though you was another man!" she said. "But I wasn't quite tired of them all the same. I think I must ax 'e to put on a beard, Dan. I like 'em, because faither's got one."

"I could easy enough; my chin be like a stubble field after I've let him bide a day or two."

"But I couldn't rub my cheek against it while 'twas coming!'

"Better let me go as I am."

"I'll think about that. Be you going to stop to supper?"

"Can't, worse luck. I've promised to be back for a few indoor jobs this evening."

"When shall I see you next?"

"To-morrow night without a doubt. I'll come up over for an hour after supper."

"'Tis a terrible long way up; an' a terrible rough road."

"Not to me—and never has been."

"I love you with every drop of blood in my body, you dear blessed Daniel!"

"Well I know it; but 'tis such an amazing thought, I can't grasp it yet. 'Twill take days, I doubt."

"I've grasped it tight enough! 'Tis the only thing in my head. I've forgot everything else in the world, for there's nought else worth knowing, except you love me."

Thus they prattled at the door. Then a great gust dashed in and blew out the lamp. Brendon had to stop until it was relighted, and they made three more partings. Then Mr. Friend's voice called Sarah Jane, and Brendon set out in earnest for home.

The darkness was full of storm; but his heart made a heaven of night, and the elements that swooped, and shouted, and soaked, were agreeable to Daniel as he plunged into them. They seemed tremendous as his love; and his love made him tremendous as they were. He felt kinship with the lash of the rain and the thrust of the wind. Underfoot, earth, like a slave, submitted to the torrent and the gale; and he also spurned it even as they did; he feared not its steep and stony miles; he swept forward as strong and fierce as the sky, as joyful as the fetterless forces of the air.

CHAPTER XI
SUSAN BRINGS THE NEWS

On the morning after Daniel's glorious adventure, the girl Susan found it necessary to withdraw from her Aunt Hepsy's unsettled atmosphere and seek the calmer climate of her Aunt Tab. As usual, she appeared about breakfast time on a washing day; and as usual Tabitha expressed much concern and regret. Susan enjoyed a good breakfast, and found herself able to take an important part in the subject of the moment. To those who are familiar with the rustic's sense of humour, it need not be said that the event of that morning was Daniel Brendon's appearance whiskerless. Over night they had not seen him, for a hunger, higher than need of meat or drink, filled the man after his walk with the storm. He had desired no human face to come between him and his thoughts, had done his work by lantern-light in an outhouse, and had then gone to his chamber and there communed with his God. Kneeling, he poured out immense gratitude and thanksgiving; and before the first narrow light of day called him to rise, Brendon had wakened and again devoutly turned his thoughts to the creed that controlled him.

His advent at the breakfast table provoked titters, then guffaws, then questions. Agg first marked the change and thrust his elbow into Joe Tapson's ribs; then Tabitha cocked her thin nose, and John Prout smiled calmly. It was Lethbridge who first dared to approach the subject directly. After Walter Agg had stroked his own cheeks and Tapson subtly inquired what was the price of hair for stuffing pillow-cases, Peter Lethbridge boldly spoke and reminded Dan of a circumstance that he had forgotten. Upon his abstraction at breakfast fell a startling utterance.

"Good Lord, Dan!" cried Lethbridge with great affected concern, "the wind have blowed off your whiskers, my bold hero!"

Then laughter echoed, so that the lamp shook and Mr. Prout ordered silence.

"You'll wake master!" he said. "Can't a man shave his hair as it pleases him, without you zanies making that row?"

"You'm a hardened bachelor, John," said Tapson; "but I know better—eh, Dan'l? Ban't what pleases you, but what pleases her—come now?"

"If she'd axed un to shave his head, the poor soul would have done it—wouldn't you, Dan?" asked Agg.

"I'd forgot 'em," confessed Brendon. "I dare say it looks odd to your silly eyes."

"Did she cut 'em off with her scissors?" inquired Lethbridge, and Tabitha, taking Daniel's side, felt it necessary to reprove him.

"You eat your bacon and don't be too funny, Peter Lethbridge," she said, "else you might hurt yourself."

Brendon's love affair was well known and had already formed matter for mirth.

"You've done wrong, however," declared Tapson. "When Sarah Jane sees that great jowl of thine laid naked as a pig's chap, she'll wish the whiskers back."

"'Tis like as if you got two triangles of white paint upon your cheeks, Mr. Brendon," ventured Susan respectfully.

"You'm a lost man, mark me," continued Joe Tapson. "'Twas a rash act, and you'll rue it yet."

"If you buzzing beetles will let me speak," answered Dan genially, "I'd give 'e a bit of news. There's such a lot on my mind this morning, that I'd quite forgot my whiskers. Well, souls, she'm going to take me, thank God! I axed the question last afternoon and she be of the same mind!"

The woman in Tabitha fluttered to her lips and head. She went over and shook Brendon's hand, and her eyes became a little moist.

"Bravo! Bravo!" said Mr. Prout. "Very glad, I'm sure, though 'tis a shattering thing for a Ruddyford man to want a wife."

"Now he's set the example, these here chaps will be after the maidens, like terriers after rats; you mark me," foretold Joe Tapson.

"Tab," said John Prout, "draw off a quart or so of beer—not cider. 'Tis early, but the thing warrants it. Us'll drink good luck to 'em, an' long life an' a happy fortune."

Dawn already weakened the light of the lamp and made a medley of blue streaks and splashes on the men's faces. Now they neglected their mugs of tea for the more popular beverage, and all drank Daniel's health; while he grinned to his ears and thanked them and shook hands with them.

It was then, when the party had decreased, and Tapson, Agg, and Lethbridge were gone to work, that Susan spoke with the frankness of youth.

"I'm awful surprised, Mr. Brendon," she said, "because to home, where I live, 'tis thought that Jarratt Weekes, my aunt's son, be going to marry Sarah Jane Friend. He thinks so hisself, for that matter."

"He thinks wrong, Susan," answered Daniel. "He offered marriage, but it wasn't to be. Sarah Jane likes me best, though I'm only a poor man. And there's an end of the matter."

"Of course she likes you best—such a whopper as you be! But my cousin, Jarratt, will be awful vexed about it, when he hears."

"I'm sorry for him, I'm sure."

Susan fell into thought, from which her aunt aroused her.

"Now, my dear, you can just put on your bonnet and cloak and march home again. I don't want you to-day. Washing was done yesterday, and I've got to go down to Bridgetstowe; so the sooner you run back to Aunt Hepsy and beg her pardon, the better for you."

"Agg's going to take the cart to Gimmet Hill, and he can drive you a good part of the way," said Mr. Prout.

Susan would have disputed this swift return under ordinary circumstances; but to-day, the richer by great news, she felt rather disposed to go back at once. She did not like Jarratt Weekes; for when, as sometimes happened, he was busy and she had to show visitors over Lydford Castle, he always took every penny of the money from her, even though it exceeded the regulation charge.

"Very well," said Susan. "I'll go along with Mr. Agg; and next time Jar has anything sharp to say to me, I'll give him a stinger!"

"You'll do better to mind your own business," advised her aunt. "The man will hear he's out of luck soon enough, without you telling him."

"Then I should lose the sight of his face," said Susan spitefully. "Him and his mother be so cock-sure that she's going to take him."

"A good few others besides Jarratt Weekes will have to face it," said Tabitha. "There's been a lot after that lovely she for years. They flaxen maidens make the men so silly as sheep. You won't have 'em running after you in a string, Susan, though you grow up never so comely."

"I ban't so sartain of that," said Susan. "I know a chap or two——"

She broke off and picked up her sunbonnet.

"You ban't so bad for fifteen, sure enough," declared John Prout. "Now then, off you go, or else Walter will be away without 'e."

The girl, who had left Lydford at half-past four in the morning, now returned quite cheerfully. As Agg's cart breasted White Hill and presently reached the high road, the sun came out and the weather promised a little peace. It was bright and still after the storm. Some belated Michaelmas daisies yet blossomed in the garden of Philip Weekes; a cat sat at the door in the sun. It recognized Susan and greeted her as she returned. In the rear of the house, clearly to be heard, her aunt's voice sounded shrill. She was talking to a neighbour, and Susan listened, but heard no good of herself.

"The anointed, brazen, shameless trollop—the hussy! the minx! And to think what I've done and suffered for her! The dogs and beasts have more heart in 'em than her. Here be I—toiling day and night to make her a useful creature and teach her the way to grow up decent—and she turns on me, like the little wasp she is, and runs away, as if I was the plague. Let it happen once more—but once—an' so sure as the sun's in the sky, she shall go to the workhouse. 'Tis the evil blood in her veins—the toad. Her mother——"

Here Susan intervened.

"You can call me what you please, Aunt Hepsy," she said. "But don't you go giving my dead mother no names. I wasn't her fault anyway."

"Back again, you saucy maggot! No—poor soul, you wasn't her fault; you was her eternal misfortune—same as you be mine. But don't you think I'm an angel, because I ban't—nothing but an unfortunate, down-trodden old woman. But I won't be rode roughshod over by a black imp like you, and so I tell 'e. You go once again, and God's my judge, you shan't come back. I won't let your shadow over my doorstep no more. You shan't bring my grey hairs with sorrow to the grave, you scourge of a girl!"

She rated, like some harsh-voiced machine that needs oil, and Susan, perfectly accustomed to these explosions, stood silent before her, waiting for a familiar hitch or gasp, that she knew would presently reduce her aunt to temporary silence.

At last it came, just as Philip Weekes appeared from a visit to his poultry.

"This be very serious, Susan," he said. "I really don't know what to think of it. 'Tis a senseless, improper thing to be off like this whenever you be niffed with your aunt—such a woman as she is, too. And—and—how is it you'm back so soon?"

"Because——" began Susan; but Mrs. Weekes was now able to proceed.

"Because your Aunt Tabitha didn't just happen to want 'e, no doubt. As feeble as a mole she is, to have stood it so often. She did ought to have sent you packing with a flea in your ear first time ever you dared to run away, instead of keeping you to help washing. Just like you all—you Prouts and Weekeses—soft stuff—soft stuff—and you'll all go down into the pit together. Lord, He knows where you'd be yourself, Philip Weekes, if it wasn't for me. But even I can't turn putty into starch. Putty you are, and putty you will be till the Day of Doom."

"I comed back, Uncle Philip, because I got hold of a very interesting piece o' news, and I knowed Aunt Hepsy would be very much obliged to me for telling of it," said Susan swiftly.

"Interesting news, indeed! Then you've been listening to other people, I suppose? That's your way. If you'd listen to me, you might get salvation; but never, never—what I say don't matter more than the wind in the hedge. I'm only an old fool that haven't seen the world, and haven't got no wisdom or learning. Of course Aunt Tabitha knows so much better, and of course Uncle John's a good second to Solomon! Well, well, there's times when a broken spirit hungers for the grave and peace. And so I feel more and more when I look at you, Susan."

"All the same, I comed home for nought but to tell you. 'Tis about Sarah Jane. She'm not going to have cousin Jar. She's took another man. I've seen him."

Mrs. Weekes sat down. She dropped so suddenly that her husband was alarmed. Her hand went up to her breast; her eyes grew round.

"Take her away," said Hephzibah feebly; "take that little black-eyed liar away, and get me my peppermint. 'Tis her one delight and plot from daylight till dark to fetch up my spasms; and now she've done it."

"'Tis solemn truth; and I don't want to fetch up your spasms, Gods knows," whimpered Susan. "The man himself told me. He's called Daniel Brendon—a whacker with gert hands, I never see the like. He's shaved off his whiskers for her, and she's taken him. So Jar's out of it."

Mr. Weekes brought his wife her peppermint mixture, and it appeared to have a remarkable effect.

"Out of it! We'll see about that. To throw over Jarratt Weekes for a nameless clod-pole from the middle of the Moor! You just go down to the castle this instant moment and fetch the man to me. The sooner he hears tell of this, the better."

"I shouldn't do it," advised Jarratt's father. "Let her tell him. The blow will fall easier like that. 'Twill cut him up rather cruel."

"Bah!" cried Mrs. Weekes, rising to her feet. "I'd sooner go to a shell-snail for opinions than you. A mouse have got more courage, and a ear-wig more sense. He shall hear, and he shall go to this chap and just bid him be off about his business. Why—good angels!—ban't Jarratt and Sarah Jane almost tokened already? Be my son going to give her up now? Not very likely! He's got my courage in his blood, I hope. A fighter I've always been, and always had to be; and I thank God for it every night on my knees. And so should you, you gawkim of a man, for you'd be of no more account than an eft in a pond if it wasn't for me."

Philip nodded mechanically, as he always did when the torrent roared; then he faded away to his fowls, and Susan went off that she might find her cousin. This task was agreeable to her, for she did not love him. She conveyed her news in as few words as possible, and he stared at her without any words at all. Then presently, with a dark brow, the man came before his mother.

"What's this?" he asked.

"You go and take off them filthy boots and sweep the upper landing," said Aunt Hepsy to Susan, who appeared a few yards behind her son; then, when a broom began to work overhead, she turned to Jarratt.

"Well may you ask! That thankless terror of a child runned off to Ruddyford again last night; and there she heard it. The man be called Daniel Brendon—some labourer lately took on by Woodrow. But 'tis for you to stop it if you're my son. I lay I'd put a spoke in their wheel double quick! All the same, the woman's not worth it—a gert, good-for-nought, gallivanting giglet as she is!"

"A pretty poor compliment to me, if it's true," he said.

"Very likely it isn't true at all. Still, it's your job. Only think twice. There's the schoolmaster's darter be worth twenty of Sarah Jane."

"Couldn't stand her voice, mother—nor yet her temper."

"More fool you. Give me a voice and a temper, too, if you want to get on in the world. 'Tis the gentle sort, as twitters like birds and be frightened to hurt a fly, as always go down. Let people hear your voice and feel your temper; then they'll respect you and you'll keep up your end of the stick. Them as be so sweet as sugar, mostly melt like sugar in the hard business of life."

"One thing I know, afore God, and that is, if she takes any man but me, I'll be revenged on her and him, if it costs my last farthing."

"What's the sense of that talk? If you'm set on her still, have her willy-nilly. Do anything inside honesty. Ride off with her! Break the man's stupid head for him! All the same, that's not sense, but only passion. My advice may be nought; but it is just this: that you bide along with your mother for the present, and wait for a better maiden to turn up."

"That woman could have done pretty well anything she liked with me."

"I hope not. What foolishness! You think so now. You wouldn't have thought so a week beyond your honey-month. Well, 'tis for you to go forward. The very sort of job I should have liked, if I'd been a man."

"I'll have it out with the chap."

"Better have it out with her. And yet, perhaps, you'm right. Tell him to his face she'm yours, and tokened to 'e. Stir him up; or, if you find he's that sort, pay him off. Twenty pounds would go an awful long way with a man. 'Tis far easier for such a chap to get a girl to walk with him than put by twenty pounds into the saving's bank."

"A likely idea," said Jarratt. "Such a fellow wouldn't know what love means, same as an educated man like me. I dare say if I was to put it into pounds, shillings, and pence, he'd meet me like a lamb."

Mrs. Weekes almost regretted giving her son advice that looked so promising. Now, she did not wish him to marry Sarah Jane; she did not wish him to marry at all; but since he seemed set upon the step, her desire turned to the schoolmaster's daughter as a woman of character, who would also have three figures for her dowry.

"When all's said, I could wish you would think of Mary."

"Not I," answered her son. "I saw a touch of Mary after that committee meeting at her father's. The place was pretty full of baccy smoke and beer reek, certainly; and she didn't say nothing—not a word—when she looked in at the finish; but there was an expression on her face that made me almost sorry for Churchward after we'd gone, though he is the biggest, emptiest old fool in Lydford."

"A silly, blown-up man! I like to stab his ideas with a word, and let the wind out. But his daughter's not so chuckle-headed. She'd make a tidy wife."

"Not for me. I'll fight yet for Sarah Jane. And any stick's good enough to beat a dog."

Mrs. Weekes, however, hesitated before this sentiment.

"Fight fair, Jar," she said. "Don't let it be told of my son that he didn't go to work honest and above-board. No—no, I never would believe it. Mrs. Swain often says to me that whatever faults I may have—and who hasn't?—yet I speak home to the truth, good market or bad, and never deceive the youngest child as comes with a penny, or the simplest fool who would buy a fowl without feeling it. Be straight. You must be straight, for there's not a crooked drop of blood in your veins. You know all about your mother's family, and as for your father's—rag of a man though he is—I will say of Philip Weekes that he never departs from uprightness by a hair. Often, in my most spirited moments, when I've poured the bitter truth into his ear, like a river, half the night long, your father have agreed to every word, and thanked me for throwing such light on his character."

"I shan't offer the man twenty to begin with," he said. "I may choke him off for less. I ban't angry with him: I'm angry with her for listening to him, or allowing herself to know such trash."

"And I'll help where I get the chance, be sure of that. Your good's my good. If I can catch Sarah Jane some day, I'll drop a word in season."

"Don't," he said. "You keep out of it till I tell you. I'll ax you soon enough to lend a hand if the time comes when you can be useful."

CHAPTER XII
THE PRICE OF SARAH JANE

The air was heavy with unshed rain, and the Moor reeked after past storms of night, as Jarratt rode over Lyd river and breasted the slopes of Bra Tor. A boy on a pony followed him, and two dogs brought up the rear. Mr. Weekes was come to drive some colts off their pastures; and, being doubtful, to a few miles, where they might be found, he had made an early start. Great clouds hid the summits of the land, and water shone in pools or fell in rivulets on every side.

Then it was that, passing through the mediæval ruins of old enterprise, where once Elizabethan miners streamed the Moor for tin, the keeper of Lydford Castle suddenly found himself face to face with a man much in his thoughts of late. Though he had never seen Brendon until that hour, he recognized him instantly by reason of his great size. Daniel was walking up the hill with his face towards the peat-works, and he carried a message from Mr. Woodrow to Gregory Friend.

"Good-morning!" shouted Jarratt, and the pedestrian stopped. Soon Weekes was beside him and had leisure to note his rival. The great brown face, square jaw, dog-like eyes and immense physical strength of the man were all noted in a searching glance; and he also saw what pleased him little: that Brendon was better dressed, cleaner, and smarter every way than a common hind.

"Have you seen my colts this way, neighbour?" he asked. "They're ear-marked with red worsted."

"Then I met with them only yesterday. There's a grey mare in foal along with them."

"That's right."

"You'll find 'em down in the strolls on this side Rattle-brook for certain."

"Much obliged to you."

Weekes shouted to his boy, directed the road, and told him to proceed and wait by the river until he himself should follow. Then he turned again to Brendon.

"You're not a Lydford man, are you?"

"No. I belong to Ruddyford—down-along. I'm just going up to the peat-works with a message. You'll be Mr. Jarratt Weekes, I suppose?"

"Jarratt Weekes is my name. And what's yours?"

"Daniel Brendon."

"Ah! you're not easily forgot. I suppose you don't know of anybody who wants a horse? This one I'm riding is for sale."

Brendon found Mr. Weekes walking slowly up the hill beside him. His pulse quickened. He guessed that the other meant to speak of matters more personal presently, for it had come to his ears that Jarratt Weekes publicly refused to give up Sarah Jane. Agg brought news from Lydford how Weekes had said in the bar of the Castle Inn that he was engaged to Gregory Friend's daughter, and would punish any man who denied it.

"A good horse seemingly. Have 'e asked my master, Mr. Woodrow? He's only waiting to be tempted, I believe."

"A good horse, as you say; but he won't carry beer," explained Jarratt Weekes. "Not that I ever want him to do so; but he's always nervous of the dark. Old farmer Routleigh used to have him; then, coming home market-merry from Okehampton, he got into trouble and was left in the hedge. I like the horse very well, but he's barely up to my weight. He'd suit Woodrow exactly, I should judge."

"I'll mention the matter to him."

"Thank you, Brendon. Brendon was it you said, or Brandon?"

"Brendon's my name."

"Lucky I met you, then, for I've wanted to have a say with you for some time."

Daniel did not answer.

"Look here, now—between men there need be no beating about the bush. That's women's way. And a woman I want to talk about. In Lydford they are mentioning the name of a Daniel Brendon with that of Miss Friend, who lives up here for the present at Dunnagoat Cottage with her father."

The other's face hardened, and a heavy look came into his eyes; but he did not speak.

"That's not as it should be," continued Jarratt Weekes. "It gets about, and then there's wrong ideas in the air. Living up here, the girl can't hear it or contradict it. But 'tis a very unmaidenly thing for her to be talked over like that, and, frankly, I don't much like it, Brendon."

Still Daniel preserved silence. His heart was beating hard; he felt anger running in his veins and his jaws fastening on each other. But he made no answer. Instead he stopped, slowly drew his pipe and a tobacco-pouch from his pocket, and prepared to smoke.

"Buckets more rain be coming," he said presently, looking at the sky.

"Don't change the subject, please. Answer my question."

"I don't know you'd asked one."

"You're wasting time to pretend ignorance. Say what you've got to say. I've a perfect reason and right to speak to you on this delicate matter, and everybody well knows it—but yourself apparently. Now speak."

"You had better finish telling first," answered Daniel.

"To me you appear to be on a wild goose chase altogether, and talking no better than silly rummage. Why are you so busy about Sarah Jane Friend? Tell me that, and then 'twill be time for me to talk to you. Let's have your reason and right you mention, if you please, Mr. Weekes."

"My reason and right is that I am going to marry her myself. We are engaged. Everybody knows that very well. And nobody better than Sarah Jane Friend. It happens that I've been exceedingly busy lately—too busy to be quite so lover-like as I ought. So she's been amusing herself by drawing you on. But 'tis beyond a joke now, and I'll have no more of it, or I'll speak to your master."

"Ah!" said the other, "that's the sort of man you are, then? My girl was wise to throw you over, and your dirty money too. Tokened to you, you liar! I wonder the hand of God don't drive you into the dust for saying it! Tokened to you—when you know so well as I do that, last Sunday week, she told you, once for all, she wasn't going to take you? What d'you think me and she are? A pair of fools to go down afore your brazen voice?"

"You'd better not have me for an enemy, my man. It won't pay you in the long run, I promise you."

"Bluster's a fine weapon—to back a lie; but truth can stand without it. You've told me a string of lies, and well you knew they were."

He lighted his pipe, and Weekes laughed.

"Well, well, you're a smart man, I find. I'll give you that credit. You see pretty far through a millstone—eh? If you won't knock under to me, then we'll start again, and put it on a business footing. I want no misunderstanding with you. This girl thinks she's fond of you for the moment. I'll grant that much. But you'll see, if you really care a button about her, that her prosperity would be a good deal surer with me than with you. You needn't be angry at all. This is a matter of business. I want her. I've known her—long, long before ever you did; and if you hadn't turned up from God knows where, she'd have come to me right and proper when I decided I was ready for her. I am ready for her now. If I'd asked her a month sooner, she'd have come without question, of course; but meanwhile she had seen you, and was taken, like a child, with your size. So it stands. I grant that you've got the whip hand for the minute. You have me in your power up to any reasonable sum. It lies in a nutshell, Daniel Brendon. What's your figure?"

"For chucking her?"

"For leaving her alone to come to her senses. Money's not got every day; a wife can be. If you want the last, there's no better way to get 'em than with the first."

"Yet Sarah Jane put me afore your cash seemingly?"

"Like any foolish girl might in a rash moment. But you're not a fool, or I'm no judge of character. You're a man of ideas and ambitions. I thought you were a common labourer. That's what made me rather savage. I see you're a man as good as myself—every bit. So I'll forgive Sarah that much, and appeal to your sense of justice to give me back my own. And since I know well enough you will be making a great sacrifice, I offer you an equivalent."

Daniel listened.

"A generous chap you are, then?"

"Yes, I am. I don't want to exert force, or trust to my position. I meet you man to man equal. I've long been as good as tokened to her, and it would be a very wicked thing for you to come between us. I'll not say you have no rights, however; I'll not say that a silly woman's passing whim isn't to count. I'll grant everything—everything in reason. I'll allow that you won her fair and square, though she didn't tell you quite the truth, I'm afraid. I'll allow that for the moment she honestly thinks that she loves you better than she loves me. But, beyond all that, there's these two points. I'll offer you good money to drop this, as in justice to me you should do at once; and I'll say that if you want Sarah Jane to be happy and content and prosperous, you must see that I'm the man to make her so—not you."

"That's your side, then?"

"Yes; that's my side—the side of justice and wisdom, if you come to think of it."

"And what's the figure? I'm a poor man, and oughtn't to lose a chance of making good money, Mr. Weekes. 'Tis the opportunity of a lifetime, you see. 'Twill never come again."

"Well, I'm no skinflint. Give her up and I'll let you have ten pounds."

"Ten pounds! That's an awful lot!"

"A lot of money, as you say."

"But not enough for Sarah Jane."

Weekes held the battle as good as won, and now determined to fight for the lowest figure possible. He was rather astonished to succeed so easily, and from great anxiety leapt quickly over to the other extreme of contempt.

"You're greedy, I'm afraid."

"No, no—not greedy, only businesslike. I won her fairly, you see. Us can't all go uphill, like you. Some stands still; some goes down. Here's my chance to go up a little."

"I'll make it fifteen, then."

"'Tis for me to make the figure now, and for you to pay it. I suppose the question is what's Sarah Jane Friend worth to you?"

"Not at all," answered Jarratt. "That's neither here nor there. All I want to know is what money you'll drop her for. And I warn you not to be too greedy, else I may get rusty on my side and take her by force for nothing."

"I see; I must be reasonable?"

"Of course—give and take in business."

"Well, then, suppose we say—a hundred million pounds?"

"Don't be a fool," answered the other testily. "I'm not talking to you for fun."

Then Daniel's temper burst from control.

"God damn you, you ugly, cross-eyed cur! To dare to come to a man and offer ten pounds to him for his woman! You flint-faced wretch!—a withered thing like you to think of her! I——"

"You'd better——" began Weekes; but Brendon roared him down.

"Shut your mouth! 'Tis your turn now to hear me! If you dare to speak again, I'll pull you off your horse and take the skin from your bones! What dirt d'you think I'm made of, to tell this wickedness in my ears? I wonder you ban't struck for it. Ten pounds for Sarah Jane; and you sit there on your horse under Heaven and nothing done against you! But it won't be forgot—remember that. 'Tis a black mark upon your name for evermore. Ten pounds; and you ought to be damned ten times over for every shilling of it! And if ever you come anigh her again, I'll break your neck, God's my judge! A man as she's said 'No' to a dozen times! Go and hang yourself, you grey rat! She wouldn't have you if you was made of gold, and well you know it. To say as I came between you! To say she'd be a happier woman along with you than with me! Happy with you—as reckon she'm worth ten pounds! There—get away after your ponies, and never you look into her face or mine again, or I'll knock your two eyes into one—so now you know!"

He strode on up the hill, panting and raging like a bull, while Weekes looked after him. Jarratt had turned very grey under this torrent of abuse. He was stung by the other's scorn, and felt that he did not deserve it. But he kept his wits, and perceived that Brendon, huge and loutish though he might be, had proved too clever for him in this matter. The lover of Sarah Jane had trapped Mr. Weekes by a pretended greed, and led him into folly. He realized that probably the world in general, and Sarah Jane in particular, would presently hear that he had offered a ten-pound note for her; and then raised the figure reluctantly to fifteen. This was not likely to advance his reputation at Lydford, or elsewhere. He even imagined the schoolboys shouting vulgar remarks after him along the public way.

Now he sat still on his horse for full five minutes. Then he rode after Brendon and overtook him.

"Only one word," he said. "Forget this. I didn't understand you. I'll interfere with you no more. You were right, and I was wrong. As you are victorious, be generous. Don't let my folly go further. We all make mistakes. I have erred, Mr. Brendon, and I regret it."

Brendon regarded Jarratt doubtfully. The giant still panted with his anger, and steam rolled out from his mouth in puffs upon the wet, dark air.

"'Tis human to err; 'tis human to forgive. I was wrong—very wrong. I own it. Who can do more? We've all got our weak places, and money is mine. Let them without sin cast the first stone. Remember what I must feel to lose Sarah Jane."

This last stroke answered its purpose, and Brendon relented very slowly.

"I know well enough what that must be."

"Be generous then to a desperate man. Hide up this that I have told you. The sum is nothing. I knew well enough you wouldn't take ten—or ten thousand. In sober honesty I'm much poorer than folk think, though I pretend to be warm. Anyway, I ask you to pardon me for insulting you, and to keep this talk secret—even from her. No man likes his mistakes blazed out for the people to scoff at. Do as you'd be done by in this—that's all I ask."

He pleaded better than he knew, for the victor already regretted his own coarse language.

"Let it be, then," answered Brendon. "Go your way, and I'll go mine; and not a word of this will pass my lips. We was both wrong—you to think of such a vile thing, and me to curse you. 'Twas all fair, and you had first say to her; but she likes me best, so there's no more to be said."

"I'll abide by that," answered Jarratt Weekes. Then he turned his horse's head and rode away, with Care behind him, and such a load of hatred in his heart that it seemed to poison his blood and choke him physically. He gasped, and the evil words of Daniel Brendon—uttered with passion—were as thistledown to the thoughts that now bred within the brain of his enemy. A violent lust for revenge grew up in the soul of Jarratt Weekes from that hour; but Brendon, for his part, quickly repented of the things that he had said; displayed a victor's magnanimity; felt something of the other's tragic and eternal loss; and found it in his heart to sorrow for him.

Daniel also mourned for himself and his mighty lapse of temper and self-control. That night he prayed to be pardoned; he trembled to consider where his sudden rages might some day lead him; he thanked his Saviour for unutterable blessings, and implored that a greater patience, humility, and gentleness might be added to his character. He called also upon Heaven to sustain Jarratt Weekes under this shattering stroke, and begged that it might presently be put in his power to do the disappointed man some service.