Cramphorn quickened his pace, and Collins, now merged in blank despair, strode alter him. Together they approached Mr. Ash, and joined the aged man upon a little granite elevation at the south-eastern extremity of Scor Hill. Below them, a watercourse, now touched to fire, wound about the shoulder of the elevation; and beneath, much misty, new-born verdure of silver birch and sallow, brightened the fringe of fir woods where Teign tumbled singing to the morning.
Over against the watchers, lifted above a grey glimmer of ruined Damnonian hut villages and primæval pounds, there towered the granite mass of Kes Tor, and from the distant horizon arose the sun. He bulked enormous, through the violet hazes of nightly mist that now dwindled and sank along the crowns of the hills; then the effulgent circle of him, ascending, flashed forth clean fire that flamed along unnumbered crests and pinnacles of far-flung granite, that reddened to the peaty heart each marsh and mire, each ridge and plane of the many-tinted garment that endued the Moor.
Silently the labourers watched sunrise; then was manifested that heliacal phenomenon they had come to see. A play of light, proper to the sun at ascension, ran and raced twinkling round his disc; and, like an empyreal wheel, the blazing star appeared to revolve and spin upon its upward way.
"He be dancin'! He be dancin', now!" declared Mr. Ash.
"For sure, if I could awnly keep the watter out o' my eyes," added Jonah; while Collins, by his comment, reflected personal tribulations and exhibited an impatient spirit in presence of this solemn display.
"I've seed un shimmer same as that scores o' times on working-days," he said sourly.
"Granted—in a lesser fashion; but not like he be doin' now. He knaws as the Lard o' Hosts leapt forth from the tomb to the biddin' of cherub angels 'pon this glad marnin'—nobody knaws it better than him. An', for all his size, he'm as giddy an' gay an' frolicsome by reason of it, as the high hills what hop in the Psalms o' David."
Thus speaking, Gaffer Ash regarded the source of light with a benignant and indulgent smile.
"An' us all did ought to feel the same, I'm sure," moralised Jonah Cramphorn, wiping the tears from his eyes and blinking at a huge red spot now stamped upon his retina and reproduced in varying size against everything which he regarded. "For my part I hold that not a heathen in the land but ought to rise into a gude Christian man afore that gert act."
They waited and watched until the growing glory defied their vision; then all started to return homewards, and both the elder men declared themselves much refreshed, invigorated, and gladdened by what they had seen. Each, inspired by the incident, occupied himself with time past and matters now grown musty. They related stories of witches and of ghosts; they handled omens, and callings, and messages from dead voices heard upon dark nights; they explained the cryptic mysteries hidden in hares and toads, in stars, in 'thunder-planets,' and the grasses of the field. They treated of turning stones against an enemy; of amulets to protect humanity from the evil eye; of ill-wishing and other magical misfortunes; of oil of man; and of the good or sinister forces hidden in wayside herbs.