"I was going to name it," answered Mr. Palk.
"Good; I'm sure you was; we'll go over the lot at your convenience—to-morrow perhaps. I admire you a lot for making shift and saving my pocket. It shows a spirit that I value in a man; but we must keep our heads up, even under the present price of harness if we can; and when we've had a tell over it, I'll go down to saddler at Ashburton and put it to him as an old customer."
Joe returned from his holiday full of energy. He had to-day been at a sale of sheep at Hey Tor village and was tramping with Maynard by road behind fifty fine ewes from a famous breeder. He discoursed of sheep and his man listened without much concentration.
They trudged together behind the raddled flock with a sheep-dog attending them.
"The rare virtue of our Dartmoors is not enough known," declared Mr. Stockman. "In my opinion, both for flesh and coat, there's no long-wooled sheep in the world to beat 'em and few to equal 'em. Yet you'll find, even to this day, that our Devon long-wools be hardly known outside the South Hams and Cornwall. Mr. King had a friend from Derbyshire stopping at Brixham—a very clever man and wonderful learned in sheep; but he knew naught about our famous breed. They did ought to be shown at all the big shows all over England, and then, no doubt, they'd come into their own, and some of us who rears 'em would earn our just reward."
"That class ought to be included in all important shows certainly," admitted Lawrence. "At their best they can't be beat."
"And they ought to be shown in their wool," added Mr. Stockman. "The difficulties ought to be got over, and it should be done for the credit of the county, not to say Dartmoor."
They debated this question till the younger man wearied of it and was glad when a farmer on horseback overtook them. He had been a seller, and he approved of Joe's opinions, now repeated for his benefit. Maynard walked a little apart and found leisure to think his own thoughts. They revolved about one subject only, and reverted to it with painful persistence.
He was in love with Dinah Waycott and knew that she was in love with him. The something that was left out of her made this all the more clear, for she relied on no shield of conventions; she had a way to slip a subject of the clothes it generally wore, in shape of speech.
She had exerted no wiles, but she could not be illusive, and the obvious qualities of Dinah which had appealed to Johnny's first love had also, for different reasons, overwhelmed Maynard. Many men by these very qualities in her would have been repulsed. Experienced men might have missed those elements in Dinah that, for them, make a woman most provocative and desirable; but in the case of this man, his own experience of life and his personal adventure combined to intensify the charm that her peculiar nature possessed. He had known nothing like her; she contrasted at almost every possible point with what he had known; she shone for him as an exemplar of all that was most desirable in feminine character. He could not believe that there were many such women, and he doubted not that he would never see such another. He had tried to adopt a fatherly attitude to Dinah and, for a considerable time, succeeded. The view he took of her at their first acquaintance, when she was betrothed to John Bamsey, persisted after the breaking of the engagement; but the very breaking of the engagement enlarged this view, and the freedom, that could no longer be denied to her after that event, had improved their knowledge of each other until both learned the same fact. Then Maynard could play a fatherly friendship no more, nor could the figment of an elder brother serve. He loved her and she loved him. A thing he had never considered as possible now complicated a life that for seven years he had striven with all his might to simplify; and the new situation extended far beyond Dinah, for it was calculated to alter his own agreement and undertaking with himself. These covenants had been entered into with himself alone. Circumstances had long ago combined, at a certain period of his early, adult life, to change the entire texture of existence, deflect its proposed purpose and throw down the goal he set out to attain. And with the changes wrought in temporal ambitions had come others. Life thus dammed ceased to flow. His future collapsed and in its place appeared a new purpose, if negation could be called a purpose. That had sufficed, though at a cost of mental corrosion he did not guess; but now it seemed that a closed book was thrown open again and he stood once more facing outlets to life that even implied happiness. His existence for seven years, it appeared, had not been a progression, but a hiatus. Yet he knew, even while he told himself this, that it must be a delusion and a juggle with reality; since no man can for seven years stand still.