"No, no; it's true enough."
"Then he may be married himself by this time, and in a new home, with England a mere dream behind him?"
"I wish I thought he was, Myles—for—for general peace of mind; but I don't. If he had a live, guiding, absorbing passion, after Honor, it was Godleigh—the woods and hills and songs of Teign. These things were in his blood. If I know him, they might have drawn him back with bands of steel."
"Why didn't they do so then?"
"How can we say that they didn't?"
"What! He may have been here—at our elbows?"
"I see the likelihood of that clearer than you, being blind. Yes, I can very easily think of him under shadow of night, with the true feel of a ghost, rambling beneath his own trees—his and not his—or listening to the river, or creeping to his own door when all men slept; or in the dawn—such a lover of cock-light as he was—he would steal through the dew with the birds to watch sunrise, then vanish and hide himself, or get above to some wild ridge of the moor and lie there till darkness gathered again. Such freaks would be meat and drink to him; and also to remember that he was only a live man in Australia, but a dead one in his own land. Just for argument suppose that was so; then look back a little way and think it out."
But Myles could by no means divine his uncle's drift. Practical even before this surprise, he was looking to the future, not backward, for study of the past appeared vain, and doubly vain to him in this crisis.
"Not much use turning back," he said. "I want to know about the time to come. These two—Collins and Cramphorn—through their fool's errand have certainly unearthed an extraordinary fact: Christopher Yeoland's secret, so to call it. And it is for us to determine whether our duty is to proclaim the thing or not. There's Godleigh—it falls empty again next autumn, for the people don't renew their lease."
"Well, Godleigh reverts to the man in Australia. The lawyers believe that man is an ancient settler; we know, or think we know, that the place has not really changed hands. Yeoland may reappear after giving Little Silver due warning."