The Duchy had long desired the land, for 'tis Duchy's rule to snap up the tenement farms as they fall in the market, and indeed few will soon remain in private possession; but for the minute the two brothers—middle-aged bachelors both—held on where their forefathers had worked before them time out of mind, and it looked almost as though they was going to be the last of the ancient name to resist the over-lord of Dartmoor; for men come and men go; but Duchy lasts for ever and, no doubt, will have all it wants to the last rood afore many years be past.
One of the next generation, however, still stood for the Gregory race, and he was a nephew to Joe and Amos. A third brother they had, but him and his wife were dead, and their only son lived with Joe and was thought to be his heir. Ernest Gregory he was called, and few thought he'd make old bones, for the young man was pigeon-breasted and high-coloured and coughed a good bit when first he came up from the "in country" to the Moor.
Along with his uncle, however, he put on flesh and promised better. Fair and gentle he was—a quiet, timid sort of chap, who kept pretty much to himself and didn't neighbour with the young men and maidens. He was said to be vain behind his silence and to reckon himself a good deal cleverer than us Merripit people; but I never found him anything but well behaved and civil spoken to his elders, and I went so far sometimes as to ask his Uncle Amos why for he didn't like the man. Because the master of Furze Hill never did care about Ernest, though Joe Gregory, with whom the young fellow lived at Vitifer, thought very highly of him indeed.
And Amos confessed he hadn't got no deep cause to dislike his nephew.
"To be plain, 'tis a woman's reason and no more," admitted Amos. "Ernest have got a glide in his eye, poor chap, and God knows that's not a fault, and yet I never can abide that affliction and it would put me off an angel from heaven if the holy creature squinted."
It was a silly prejudice of the man, and in time I think he got it under and granted that you did ought to judge a person by their acts and not by their eyes; but human nature has its ingrained likes and dislikes, and I for one couldn't question Amos, because I hate a hunchback, and I wouldn't trust one of they humped people—man or woman—with anything that belonged to me. The broadest-minded of us have got a weak spot like that somewhere and hate some harmless thing if 'tis only a spider.
But, after he'd been along at Vitifer five years, I don't think a living soul felt anything but kindly to Ernest, and when it was rumoured that he'd got brave enough to go courting Sarah White from Postbridge, everybody wished him luck, including his uncles—especially Amos himself; for Joe's younger brother was very friendly to the Postbridge Whites, and them who thought they knew, always said how he'd offered for Jenny White twenty-five years before and might very like have won her if she hadn't loved the water-keeper on East Dart better and married him instead.
Then happened the wondrous mystery of Joe Gregory. 'Twas just before Christmas—rough stormy weather and not much doing on the high ground—when Joe set out early one morning for Exeter to see his lawyers. He'd done very well that year—better than Amos—and he was taking a matter of one hundred and fifty pounds in cash to Exeter for his man of business to invest for him. And Ernest drove him in to Ashburton, at cocklight of a stormy day, and was going in again that evening to meet his uncle and fetch him home.
All went well, and at the appointed time Joe's nephew set out once more with a light trap and a clever horse, after dark, to meet the evening train. And no more was heard till somewhere about ten o'clock of that night. Then Amos Gregory, just finishing his nightcap and knocking out his pipe to go to bed, much to his astonishment heard somebody banging on the front door of Furze Hill. Guessing it was some night-foundered tramp, he cussed the wanderer to hell; but cussing was only an ornament in his speech, for a tenderer creature really never lived, and he wouldn't have turned a stray cat from his door that fierce night, let alone a human.
It weren't no tramp, however; it proved to be his nephew Ernest, and the young man was clad in his oilskins and dripping with the storm rain and so frightened as a rabbit.