The door was burst open, and Anthony entered, with the water pouring off him. He was blinded with the rain that had beat in his face, as he came toward Cudlip's town. In his arms he bore something like a log.
"There!" said he, and cast this object on the table, where it struck and shattered the porcelain punchbowl, sending its last contents over the table and the floor.
"There!" shouted Anthony, "will you now believe I have been in the churchyard?"
"By the Lord!" shouted Solomon Gibbs, "this is past a joke. This is a mortal insult."
That which Anthony had cast on the table was one of the oak posts which marked the head of a grave, square, with a sort of nick and knob on the top. Such a post as was put up by those who could not afford granite tombstones.
"It is an insult! It is an outrage!" roared Gibbs, "look there!" He pointed to the inscription on the post—it ran thus:—
Richard Malvine,
of Willsworthy, Gent.
CHAPTER IX. WILLSWORTHY.
The night of storm was succeeded by a fresh and sparkling morning. The rain hung on every bush, twinkling in prismatic colours. There still rose smoke from the moor, but the wind had shifted, and it now carried the combined steam and smoke away to the east. The surface of Dartmoor was black, as though bruised all over its skin of fine turf. Hardly any gorse bushes were left, and the fire had for more than one year robbed the moor of the glory of golden blossom that crowned it in May, and of the mantle of crimson heath wherewith it was enfolded in July.