There is a desolation that no natural scene has power to invoke. The labour of Nature’s thousand forces upon earth’s face may awaken awe before their enduring record, but can conjure no sense of sorrow; for high mountains, huge waste places and rivers calling shall make us feel small enough, not sad; but cast into the vast theatre some stone that marks a man’s grave, some ruined aboriginal hut or roofless cottage, some hypÆthral meeting-place or arena of deserted human activity, and emotions rise to accentuate the scene. Henceforth the desert is peopled with ghosts of men and women; and their hopes and ambitions, their triumphs, and griefs glimmer out of dream pictures and tune the beholder to a sentiment of mournfulness.

Such a scene on a scale unusually spacious may be found in the central waste of Dartmoor, nigh Postbridge. Here, where marshes stretch, all ribbed with black peat cuttings, between the arms of Dart, where Higher White Tor rises northward and the jagged summits of lesser peaks slope southerly to Crockern, there lies a strange congeries of modern buildings rotting into dust and rust at the song of a stream. Even the lonely groves that shield these ruins are similarly passing to decay; but many trees still flourish there, and under the shadows of them, or upon the banks of the Cherry-brook that winds in the midst and babbles its way to the mother-river, stand scattered remains of a considerable factory. Now only a snipe drums or a plover mews plaintively, where some short years ago was great hum and stir of business and a colony of men engaged upon most dangerous toil. Rows of whitewashed buildings still peep from the dark grove or stud those undulating hillocks that tend moorward beyond it. Tall grey chimneys rise here and there, and between certain shattered buildings, linking the same together, great water-wheels appear. These from their deep abodes thrust forth shattered spokes and crooked limbs and claws. They slumber half in gloom, like fossil monsters partially revealed. From their dilapidated jaws there glitters the slime of unclean creatures; moss hides the masses of their putrefied bones; huge liverworts clothe their decay, and hart’s-tongue ferns loll from their cracks and clefts, and thrive in the eternal twilight beneath them. Once twin pairs of grinders turned here, and the last aspect of these is even more uncouth than that of the water-wheels that drove them. Their roofs are blown away and the rollers beneath are cased in rust and moss. Willows and grasses and the flowers of the waste flourish above their ruins; broom, dock, rush, choke the old watercourses; crowfoot mantles the stagnant pools that remain; and all is chaos, wreck and collapse. For here spreads the scene of a human failure, the grave of an unsuccessful enterprise. Its secret may still be read in dank strips of old proclamations hanging upon notice-boards within the ruins, and telling that men made gunpowder here; but those precautions necessary to establish the factory upon a site remote from any populous district indirectly achieved its ruin, for profits were swallowed by the cost of carriage from a situation so inaccessible.

At gloaming of an autumn day one living thing only moved amid the old powder-mills, and he felt no emotion in presence of that scene, for it was the playground of his life; his eyes had opened within a few score yards of it. Young David Daccombe knew every hole and corner of the various workshops, and had his own different goblin names for the quaint tools still lumbering many a rotting floor, and the massive machinery, left as not worth cost of removal. Mystery lurked in countless dark recesses, and Davey had made secret discoveries too and was lord of tremendous, treasured wonders hidden within the labyrinths of these crumbling mills.

But at this moment all things were forgotten before a supreme and new experience. The boy had just caught his first trout, and a little fingerling fish now flapped and gasped out its life under his admiring eyes. Davey was a plain child, with a narrow brow and hard mouth. Now he smelt the trout, patted it, chuckled over his capture, then casting down an osier rod, with its hook and a disgorged worm halfway up the gut, he prepared to rush home and display his triumph to his mother. As he climbed up from the stream and reached a little bridge that crossed it, his small face puckered into a fear, for he heard himself called harshly, knew the voice and felt little love for the speaker.

Out of the deepening gloom under the fir trees a young man appeared with a gun under his arm.

“Be that you, Davey, an’ did I see a rod? If so, I’ll break it in pieces, I warn ’e. Fishin’ season ended last Saturday, an’ here’s the keeper’s awn brother poachin’. A nice thing!”

“Oh, Dick! I’ve catched one! First ever I really catched. Won’t mother be brave an’ glad to eat un? Ban’t very big, but a real trout. I be just takin’ it home-along.”

“You’ll do no such thing, you little rascal. Give it to me this instant moment, or else I’ll make you.”Richard Daccombe approached and towered over his brother. It was easy to see that they were near of kin.

“Please, Dick—just this wance—’tis awnly a li’l tiny feesh—first ever I took, too. An’ I swear I’ll not feesh no more—honour bright. Please—for mother never won’t believe I ackshually catched one if her doan’t see it.”

“Give it to me, or I’ll take it, I tell you, you dirty little thief.”

Davey’s lip went down. “’Tis a damn, cruel shame. You’m always against me. I wish you was dead, I do. I never knawed no chap in all my days what have got such a beast of a brother as I have.”

“Give up that feesh, else I’ll throw you in the river, you lazy li’l good-for-nought.”

“You’m a gert bully,” began the boy; then he fell upon a happy thought, and braced himself to sacrifice his most treasured secret. To let it go into his brother’s keeping was bad, but anything seemed better than that his first trout should be lost to him.

“Look ’e here, Richard,” he said, “will ’e let me keep this feesh if I tell ’e something terrible coorious ’bout these auld mills?”

The keeper laughed sourly. “A lot more you’m likely to knaw ’bout ’em than I do!”“Ess fay, I do. ’Tis a wonnerful secret as I found out all to myself, an’ never yet told to a single soul. It comes in my games—my Robinson Crusoe game; but I never play that wi’ any other chap—not even they boys from Postbridge. I be the only living soul as knaws; an’ I’ll tell you if you’ll let me keep my feesh.”

“What’s this ’mazin’ secret, then?”

“You’ll swear?”

“Ess, if the thing be any good.”

“Good! I should just reckon ’twas good. Come an’ see for yourself—I was awful ’feared at first. Now I doan’t care nothin’, an’ many a time I’ve took a gert handful an’ lighted it, an’ seen it go off ‘pouf’!”

He led the way to a low building with a dull red roof. It was windowless, but had a door that swung at the will of the wind. This erection was lined inside with matchboarding, and it contained a board of regulations that prohibited all metal within the shed. Even a nail in a boot was unlawful.

“’Tis Case House No. 4.—used once for storing powder,” said Richard Daccombe; “that’s a pile of sulphur in the corner.”

“Ess, but theer’s mor’n you can see, Dick. Look here. Another floor lies under this, though nobody minded that, I reckon, else they’d have took what’s theer.”Davey moved two boards, and beneath them—dry and sound as when there deposited—he revealed some tons of black blasting powder. His brother started, swore in sudden concern, hastened from the building, and, taking his pipe out of his mouth, carefully extinguished it. Then he returned and accosted Davey.

“Why didn’t you tell me about this before, you little fool?”

“Why for should I? ’Twas my gert secret. But you’ll not let it out, will you, Dick? If chaps comed to hear, they’d steal every atom.”

This Richard knew very well.

“I’ll be dumb, and mind that you are,” he said. “And no more playing games with gunpowder. You might have blowed the whole countryside to glory. Keep away in future. If I catch you within a hunderd yards of this place, I’ll lather you.”

“Finding be keeping,” answered Davey, indignantly.

“Perhaps ’tis; an’ might be right. You’ve heard me. That powder’s mine henceforth.”

Davey knew his brother pretty well, but such injustice made him gasp. His small brains worked quickly, and remembering that Richard’s business on the rabbit warren took him far from the powder-mills, the boy held his peace.

This silence, however, angered the bully more than words. They moved homeward together, and the elder spoke again.

“Now you can just fork out that trout, and be quick about it.”

“You promised on your honour!” cried Davey.

“Promises doan’t hold wi’ poachers.”

They were walking from the valley to their home; and the younger, seeing the farm-house door not two hundred yards distant, made a sudden bolt in hope to reach his mother and safety before Dick could overtake him. But he was soon caught and violently flung to the ground.

“Would you, you whelp?”

A blow upon the side of the head dazed the child, and before he could recover or resist, his brother had thrust a rough hand into Davey’s pocket, dragged therefrom the little trout, and stamped it to pulp under his heel.

“There—now you go home-along in front of me, you young dog. I’ll teach you!”

The boy stood up, muddy, dishevelled, shaking with rage. His eyes shone redly in the setting sunlight; he clenched his little fists, and his frame shook.

“Wait!” he said slowly, with passion strong enough for the moment to arrest his tears. “Wait till I be grawed up. Then ’twill be my turn, an’ I’ll do ’e all the ill ever I can. You’m a cowardly, cruel devil to me always, an’ I swear I’ll pay you back first instant I be strong enough to do it!”

“Get in the house an’ shut your rabbit-mouth, or I’ll give ’e something to swear for,” answered the keeper.

Then his great loss settled heavily upon Davey’s soul, and he wept and went home to his mother.

CHAPTER II

Richard Daccombe visited the little bridge over Cherry-brook yet again after his supper; and in a different mood, beside a different companion, he sat upon the granite parapet. Darkness, fretted with white moonlight, was under the fir trees; the Moor stretched dimly to the hills in one wan featureless waste; an owl cried from the wood, and one shattered chimney towered ghostly grey over the desolation. Quaint black ruins, like hump-backed giants, dotted the immediate distance, and the river twinkled and murmured under the moon, while Dick’s pipe glowed, and a girl’s voice sounded at his elbow.

“Sweetheart,” she said, “why be you so hard with Davey?”

“Leave that, Jane,” he answered. “’Tis mother has been at you—as if I didn’t know. Little twoad’s all the better for licking.”

“He’s so small, and you’m so big. He do hate you cruel, an’ your mother’s sore driven between you.”

“Mother’s soft. The child would grow up a dolt if ’twasn’t for me.”“Yet you had no brother to wallop you, Dick.”

“Faither was there, wasn’t he? I call to mind his heavy hand, and always shall. But if you mean I be a dolt, say it.”

“Us all knaw you’m cleverest man this side of Plymouth.”

“Drop it, then, an’ tell of something different.”

Jane Stanberry did as she was bid: her arms went round Dick’s neck, and her lips were pressed against his face. To the girl he represented her greatest experience. Orphaned as a tender child, she had come to Cross Ways farm, in the lonely valley of the powder-mills, and there dwelt henceforth with her mother’s kinswoman, Mary Daccombe.

The establishment was small, and a larger company had not found means to subsist upon the hungry new-takes and scanty pasture-lands of Cross Ways. Jonathan Daccombe and his wife, with two hinds, here pursued the hard business of living. Richard was in private service as keeper of White Tor rabbit warren, distant a few miles from his home; and he divided his time between the farm and a little hut of a single chamber, perched in the lonely scene of his labour. Of other children the Daccombes had none living save Davey, though two daughters and another son had entered into life at Cross Ways, pined through brief years there, and so departed. The churchyard, as Jonathan Daccombe frankly declared, had been a good friend to him.

Jane was a deep-breasted, rough-haired girl of eighteen. She possessed pale blue eyes, a general large-featured comeliness, and a nature that took life without complaining; and she held herself much blessed in the affection of her cousin Richard. Talk of marriage for them was in the air, but it depended upon an increase of wages for Dick, and his master seemed little disposed to generosity.

The bridge by night was a favourite meeting and parting place for the lovers, because young Daccombe’s work in late autumn took him much upon the Moor after dark. The time of trapping was come, and his copper wires glimmered by the hundred along those faintly marked rabbit runs, familiar to experienced eyes alone. These he tended from dusk till dawn, and slept between the intervals of his labour within the little hut already mentioned.

A topic more entertaining than the child Davey now arose; and Jane, whose spirit was romantic, with a sort of romance not bred of her wild home, speculated upon an approaching event that promised some escape from the daily monotony of life at Cross Ways.

“To-morrow he’ll actually come,” she said. “I’ve put the finishing touches to his room to-day. What will he be like, Dick?”“I mind the chap a few years back-along playing foot-ball to Tavistock. A well-set-up youth, ’bout my size, or maybe bigger in the bone. An’ he could play foot-ball, no doubt. In fact, a great hand at sporting of all sorts; but work—not likely! Why for should he? He’ll have oceans of money when his faither dies.”

“Your mother reckons ’tis all moonshine ’bout his coming to Cross Ways to learn farming. She says that he’m sent here to keep him out of mischief—for same reason as powder-mills was sent here. He’ll ride about, an’ hunt, an’ shoot, for sartain. But he won’t never take sensible to work—so your mother reckons.”

“Maybe he won’t; but faither be going to get two pound a week by him; so what he does ban’t no great odds, so long as he bides.”

“Would you call him a gen’leman?”

“Gentle is as gentle does. Us shall see.”

“Wi’ book-larnin’, no doubt?”

“Little enough, I fancy. Nought but a fool goes farmin’ in these days.”

“Yet ’tis our hope, I’m sure,” objected Jane. “Please God, Dick, us will be able to take a little farm down in the country some day—won’t us?”

“In the country—yes; but not ’pon this wilderness.”

There was silence between them again, while the owl hooted and the river scattered silver in the rushes and babbled against the granite bridge.

“Wonder what colour the chap’s eyes be, Dick?”

“They’ll be black if I hear much more about him,” he answered shortly. “For I’ll darken both first day he comes here—just to show how we stand.”

“You’re jealous afore you’ve seed him!”

“An’ you’re a blamed sight too hungry to see him. Best drop him. He won’t be nought to you, I s’pose?”

“How can you be so sharp, Dick? Ban’t it natural a gal what leads such a wisht life as me should think twice of a new face—an’ a gen’leman, too?”

“Anthony Maybridge have got one enemy afore he shows his nose here; and you’re to thank for it.”

Jane laughed. “Then I know what to expect when we’m married, I s’pose. But no call for you to be afeared! If he was so butivul as Angel Gabriel he’d be nought to me. Kiss me same as I kissed you just now.”

But Dick was troubled. His clay pipe also drew ill, and he dashed it into the water. “Damn kissing!” he said; “I’m sick of it. Get home, an’ let me go to work.”

“The young man will like you better than me, when all’s said, dear heart; for you’ll give him best sport of anybody in these parts.”

He grunted, and left her without more words; while she, familiar with his sulky moods, showed no particular regret. To the hills he strode away, and the misty marshes swallowed up sight of him, while he threaded his road through the bogs, climbed great stony slopes under the hilltop, and reached his warren. But bad fortune stuck close to Richard that night, for of two fine rabbits snared since sundown, nothing remained but the heads.

Foxes, however, are sacred upon Dartmoor, even in the warrens; though, if evil language could have hurt them, it must have gone ill with a vixen and five brave cubs, whose home was hard by in the granite bosom of White Tor.

CHAPTER III

Anthony Maybridge arrived at Cross Ways, and amongst the various items of his luggage he was only concerned for his gun-case. Mrs. Daccombe greeted the youth with old-time courtesy, and her husband soon perceived that the newcomer would be a pupil in little more than name. Anthony, indeed, made an energetic start, and for the space of a full week resolutely dogged the farmer’s footsteps; but his enterprise sprang from a whim rather than a fixed enthusiasm. On the spur of the moment, before various alternatives, he had decided upon farming; but the impulse toward that life waned, and in a month the lad found Richard Daccombe’s society much more congenial than that of his taciturn parent. Good store of snipe and plover were now upon the Moor, and they drew young Maybridge more surely than the business of manuring hay lands or getting in the mangel-wurzel crop. With Dick, indeed, he struck into close fellowship, founded on the basis of the gun; and with Jane Stanberry he also became more friendly than anybody but herself was aware. Socially, Maybridge stood separated from his host by the accident of success alone. Daccombe and Anthony’s father were old acquaintances, and the latter, a prosperous nurseryman at Tavistock, sometimes fell in with his friend when the hounds met at the powder-mills.

The boy found Jane sympathetic, and being possessed of a warm heart but little sense, he soon revealed to her the true cause of his present life and temporary banishment from home.

“If you can believe it,” he said, when she met him returning from a day with the snipe in the bogs,—“if you can believe it, I shall be surprised. I always thought a man ought to look up to women as the soul of truth and all that. I was engaged—secretly; and there was another chap I hardly knew by sight even; and that girl was playing with me—like you play with a hooked fish; the only difference being she didn’t want to land me. In fact, I was the bait, if you understand such a blackguard thing, and she fished with me and caught the other chap. I could mention names, but what’s the use?”

“How horrid!” said Jane. “I’m sure I’d very much rather not know who ’twas.”

“Well, anyway, the other chap took the bait. And the moment she got him she threw me over. After we were engaged, mind you! And the rum thing is, looking at it from a mere worldly point of view, that I shall be worth tons more money than that chap ever will be.”“She didn’t really care about you, then?”

“I suppose not, though I would have taken my dying oath she did. And after the frightful blow of being chucked, I tried to hide the effect, but couldn’t, owing to going right off my feed—especially breakfasts. My mother spotted that, and taxed me with being ill—a thing I never have been in my life. So I had to confess to her what a frightful trial I’d been through, and she told the governor.”

“I’m sure they must have been very sad about it, for your sake.”

“Not half as much as you would have thought; though many chaps have been utterly smashed up body and soul and gone into a consumption of the lungs for less. But it came as a bit of a shock to my people, because, you see, I’d never mentioned it, and—well, the girl was in a tobacconist’s shop, and my governor hates tobacco; which made it worse, though very unfair it should. Anyway, it shows what girls are.”

“And shows what fathers are, seemingly.”

“Yes; though how my governor, whose grandfather himself went out working in other people’s gardens, could object to a girl who had pluck enough to earn her own living, I don’t know. I had a furious row about it, until he pointed out that, as she had chucked me, it was not much good quarrelling with him about her. Which was true. Nobody but you has really understood what a knock-down thing it was. I’m an atheist now—simply owing to that woman; I don’t believe in a single thing. I said all girls were the same till I met you. Still, I feel as bitter as a lemon when I think much about it. But you’re different, I can see that.”

“You’ll feel happier come presently.”

“I am happier already—in a way, because I find all women are not like that. You and Mrs. Daccombe have done me a lot of good, especially you.”

“Sure I be gay and proud to think so,” said Jane.

“To promise and then change! Why, it’s contrary to human nature, I should think,” declared the ingenuous Anthony. But Jane Stanberry did not reply; she had reached a point in her own experience of life that indicated the possibility of such a circumstance.

Young Maybridge was pleasant to see, and, as cynical chance would have it, his gifts, both physical and mental, were of a sort to shine conspicuous from the only contrast at hand. Dick Daccombe had a face of true Celtic cast, that might have been handsome, but was spoiled by an expression generally surly and always mean. His character became more distrustful and aggressive as he grew older, and the suspicious nature of him looked specially ill before Anthony’s frankness and simplicity. The latter was fair, with open, Saxon type of countenance. His good temper overcame all Richard’s jealousy from the first, but the keeper envied Anthony’s extra inch and a half of height and greater weight of shoulder, though he himself was the closer knit of the two.

For a period of weeks all went well between the young men, and their increasing intimacy argued ill for Anthony’s progress toward practical knowledge in agriculture. This Jonathan Daccombe understood, but held it no concern of his. It happened that the farmer came home one day just in time to see his son and his pupil departing from Cross Ways together. An expression of contempt touched with slight amusement lighted his grey face, and he turned to Jane Stanberry, who stood at the door.

“Like the seed ’pon stony ground,” he said. “Comed up wi’ a fine blade an’ full o’ nature, then withered away, ’cause there wasn’t no good holding stuff behind. A farmer! However, there’s no call he should be. He’m here to learn to forget, not to farm.”

“He is forgetting so fast as he can,” declared the girl. “He’s got nought to say nowadays ’bout the wickedness of women and such-like; an’ he went to church wi’ mother an’ me ’essterday to Postbridge, an’ singed the psalms an’ hymns wi’ a fine appetite, I’m sure. His voice be so deep as a cow when he uplifts it.”“I reckon he’m getting over his trouble too quick for my liking,” answered Mr. Daccombe. “My bird will be off some fine mornin’ when shooting be over and theer’s nought more for him to kill.”

Meantime, while Jane spoke with admiration of Anthony’s good qualities, and Mrs. Daccombe heard her indignantly, young Maybridge himself was similarly angering another member of the Daccombe family. Now he stood with Dick upon the lofty crown of Higher White Tor, and watched a flock of golden plover newly come to their winter quarters from some northern home. They flew and cried at a great height above the marshes, wheeled and warped in the clear blue of a December sky; and when simultaneously they turned, there was a flash as of a hundred little stars, where the sunlight touched the plumage of their breasts and under-wings. But they were bound for a region beyond the range of the sportsmen who watched them; soon, indeed, the birds dwindled into dots, that made a great > upon the sky; and as they flew, they constantly renewed that figure.

“Pity,” said Anthony. “Off to the middle of the Moor. Haven’t got a shot at a golden plover yet. Miss Jane’s favourite bird, too, so she says.”

“No call for you to trouble about that. If she eats all I’ve shot for her, she’ll do very well.”

“You’re a lucky devil, Dick.”“That’s as may be.”

“Always the way with chaps like you, who never had anything to do but ask and get ‘yes’ for an answer. You don’t know when you’re well off in these parts.”

Richard laughed without much merriment.

“There’s so good fish in the sea as ever come out of it,” he said. “I’d not break my heart for any girl.”

“A chap in love to say such a cold-blooded thing!”

“We’re not all froth and splutter, like you.”

“Nor yet ice, like you, I should hope. You’re engaged to the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen in my life, and the best; and you take it as if it was your right instead of your frightfully good luck. It’s only because you don’t know the world that you are so infernally complacent about her, Richard. If you knew all that I do—”

The other sneered in a tone of levity. “A wonnerful lady’s man you—by all accounts! But don’t think I’m afeared of you. Might have been jealous afore you comed—not since.”

Anthony grew red as the dead asphodel foliage under his feet in the bogs.

“That’s as much as to say I’m a fool.”

“Why so? It’s as much as to say you’re honest—that’s all.”

“That wasn’t what you meant when you spoke. You were laughing because you know you are sharper than I am. You may be, but you’re not sharp enough to know your luck. You’ve told me pretty plainly what I am; now I’ll tell you what you are—a good shot and a good sportsman all round, but no other good that I can see. You think a jolly sight too much of yourself to make a good husband, anyway. If Jane realised—”

“Mind your awn business!” thundered out the other, “and keep her name off your tongue henceforward. D’you think I doan’t know her a million times better than you do? D’you think us wants lessons from you after all these years, you—”

“I can make you angry, then, though I am a born fool?”

“Yes, you can; an’ you damn soon will if you’m not more careful of your speech. I doan’t want to take law in my own hands an’ give you a thrashing; but that’ll I do if you touch this matter again. Who are you, to tell me my duty to my maiden?”

“As to what you’ll do or won’t do,” answered Maybridge, growing very rosy again, “there’s two sides to that. I’d have asked you to box weeks ago, only I’m taller and heavier, and I thought you would think it unsportsmanlike. But now—when you please. As for Miss Jane, I shall speak to her, and see her, and go to church with her just as often as she’ll let me, without asking leave from you or anybody. So now you know.”

Anthony swung off over the Moor, and Richard, pursuing the way to his hut on the shoulder of the tor, let the other depart unanswered. This sudden and unexpected breach rather pleased the keeper. He had always held Anthony to be a fool, and the fact seemed now proved beyond further dispute. It was not until he had lived through the loneliness of a long day and night upon the warren that the young man viewed his situation differently. Then three harpies—wrath, resentment and a natural jealousy—sprang full-fledged into being, and drove him home before them.

As for Maybridge, smarting under a sense of insult and a worse sense that he deserved it, the young man strove to excuse himself to his conscience. He assured himself many times that Richard Daccombe was unworthy of Jane Stanberry in every possible respect. And there came a day when he told her that he thought so.

CHAPTER IV

Mary Daccombe was wont to reserve the problems of the working day until nightfall; and her husband solved them as best he could during those brief minutes that intervened between the extinction of the candle and his first snore. An honest but unsentimental man, love for his offspring had never particularly marked his mind. He was contented that his sons should quarrel, and that Dick should thrash Davey when he felt so disposed, for it saved him the trouble. He held that each did the other good, and he had neither pity nor particular regard to spare for either.

This cheerless fact now appeared, for on a night soon after Christmas, Mrs. Daccombe approached her husband upon a matter of sentiment, and won colder comfort from him than she expected. He gave her an obvious opportunity to approach the subject, otherwise it is doubtful whether she would have had the courage to do so. That day, to the farmer’s astonishment and gratification, Anthony Maybridge had come back from a brief Christmas vacation. The holiday extended over a fortnight, and Daccombe fully believed that he had seen the last of his pupil; but Anthony returned, declared a renewed interest in matters agricultural, and gave the farmer to understand that he should continue to reside at Cross Ways for the present.

Now Jonathan laughed as he stretched himself on his bed; he laughed, and wondered what had brought young Maybridge again to the Moor. Whereupon his wife read him the riddle.

“Not you, nor yet the work, nor yet the shooting,” she said. “’Tis right as you should know, however, for trouble’s brewing, if I can see, an’ ’tis our awn son will smart for it.”

“Us have all got to smart off an’ on, though how that moon-calf of a boy be going to hurt Dick or Davey, I can’t tell.”

“Not Davey, though ’twas him as found it out, I reckon. Davey be venomous against his brother—always was, worse luck. Dick rubs it into the bwoy, and his brother hurts him with bitter mouth-speech when he can. ’Tis this way: that young gen’leman be getting a deal too fond of Jane Stanberry by the looks of it. That’s what he’s comed back for, I reckon. Davey spat it out essterday when Dick clouted his head. Her wasn’t theer, so the boy up an’ said as Dick’s temper would weary the Dowl, an’ that Jane was looking away from him to a better. Lucky I was by, else Dick would have done the li’l un a mischief. He growed thunder-black, yet I could see by his wrath be knowed the tale were more than Davey’s spite.”

“Them two takes after your family, mother, an’ no mistake. Yet I hope they won’t turn gaol-birds, or else weak in their intellects.”

The woman felt the tears in her weary eyes. She wiped them away, and turned in bed.

“They’m as God made ’em, master; please Him they’ll be better friends come Davey grows up. But what must us do?”

“Do? Nought.”

“Surely you’ve got your son’s good at heart? Think what ’tis for Dick to see that wicked girl coolin’, coolin’, by inches. Gall for him, poor dear.”

But the man only laughed sleepily. “Strongest wins in this world. If Richard ban’t stout enough to keep his woman by his own arts, us can’t help him.”

“You might send this young chap ’bout his business.”

“An’ fling away two pound a week? No, fay! Girls is easier picked up than two pound a week. Let Dick do what’s in him. He ban’t ’feard of that slack-twisted, yellow-haired chap, be he? Let him show the maiden which is the better man, an’ not come bleating to his mother, like a hungry lamb to a ewe.”

“He never comed hisself.”“Well, what’s to hinder him from using his fistes? Nought brings a man down in a girl’s eyes like a good hiding. Let ’em settle it same way as the tomcats do.”

“I do b’lieve your heart be made o’ moor stone.”

“Good job if ’twas. Ban’t no use being built o’ putty, nor yet o’ pity, ’pon Dartymoor. Now shut your clack, an’ let me go to sleep.”

The woman sighed, and closed her eyes.

“I’ll tell Dick what you say. Good night, master.”

CHAPTER V

Anthony Maybridge had in truth discovered that everything depends upon the point of view. What was a deed past understanding in one woman, appeared to him quite defensible for another. He had grown into a very steady admiration of Jane Stanberry, and he told himself that her attachment to the warrener was a serious error. This he firmly believed, apart from the other question of his personal regard for Jane. He discussed the matter with a grand impartiality, and felt confident that her future must be ruined if shared with such a surly and cross-grained churl as Richard Daccombe.

Presently he expressed the same fear to Jane herself, and she was much astonished to find no great indignation flame up in her mind before such a proposition. She confessed the thought had occurred to her, and asked Anthony how it could have struck him also. Whereupon he declared that his suspicion was awakened solely from disinterested regard for her welfare and future happiness. In brief, a situation stale enough developed, with that brisk growth to be observed in all similar complications when they are exhibited by primitive natures. Such seeds grow in virgin and uncultured hearts with a rapidity not manifest where the subjects are sophisticated and bound about with the etiquette of their order.

Jane Stanberry observed the radical differences between these men; she found Dick’s cloudy spirit and gloomy nature grow daily darker by contrast with the generous and sanguine temperament of Anthony. Indeed, Richard did grow more morose, as was to be expected, while he watched such a play develop and apparently stood powerless as any other spectator to change the plot of it.

But at last his sense of wrong pricked passion, and he stirred himself. Most firmly he believed all fault lay with Maybridge alone, and he attributed to that youth a guile and subtlety quite beyond his real powers of mind. Dick accused his rival of having seduced the love of Jane against her inner will—a thing obviously not possible; and upon that judgement he prepared to act.

For her part, the girl let conscience sting until the stab grew dull and failed to disturb her comfort. Each exhibition of ferocity from Richard lessened her uneasiness, and justified her in her own eyes. She plotted to meet the other man in secret; yet still she played a double part, and outwardly pretended that Dick was all in all to her.

So stood things when Mary Daccombe spoke to her son; and his father’s advice seemed good to the man, and chimed very harmoniously with personal desire, for he had reached a point where he itched to bruise and batter his adversary. Chance helped him in his ambition, and a discovery fired him to instant force of arms.

Returning home from the Moor upon a night when it was supposed that he meant to stop in his hut on the warren, Richard came through the ruins, and was astonished to see a light glimmering from the silent desolation. It had grown late on a cold, moonlit night in late January, and nothing could have been more unexpected than the presence of any human being in the old powder-mills at such a time. Supposing that he had surprised his brother Davey, Dick crept silently to the spot, and presently discovered that the brightness gleamed in two bars set at a right angle, and flashed from behind the door of a ruin. The place was windowless, but the ill-fitting entrance revealed a flame within. Richard recognised the building as Case House No. 4, and at once associated the intruder with his brother. Even as he did so, his heart beat faster at the thought of danger—not to Davey, but himself. Creeping closer, however, voices reached him, and he discovered that Anthony Maybridge and Jane Stanberry were there together.

Tingling with passion, he had some ado to keep from kicking in the door and bursting upon them; but he desisted, and with an effort crept away to reflect. Almost immediately upon his departure he heard them following, so he turned and met them not far from the little bridge.

“A fine night for a walk wi’ another man’s girl,” he said, suddenly appearing out of darkness and standing in the way of the guilty pair. “You thought I was out of hearing, no doubt, as you’ve thought often enough of late, I’ll swear, when I was closer than you reckoned. For two pins I’d blow your fool’s head off your shoulders.”

Jane shrank back, and Maybridge stammered and stuttered.

“That’s not the way to talk,” he said.

“Talk! God’s truth, I ban’t here to talk—I leave that for you. What be you doing wi’ my maid these many days? Tell me that!”

“I will. I’m glad of this. I’ve felt an awful brute lately; but you’ll make me feel better in a minute. I’ve been telling Jane that she’s making a big mistake to marry you. It’s my honest opinion, and I ought to have told you.”

“Honest! Wonder the word doan’t choke you, you gert, hulking, lazy clown! Behind a man’s back to do it! Thief that you be.”

“Not at all. I’ve never hidden from Jane—”

“Shut your mouth, you hookem-snivey fox, or I’ll hammer your white teeth down your throat! Stand up to me, now this instant moment, an’ us’ll see who’s the best man. ’Tis time this here woman knowed, an’ I’ll show her the straw you’m made of, for all your size.”

He flung down his gun and his coat, then turned up his sleeves and waited.

“We can’t fight before a girl—impossible,” said Anthony.

“Doan’t she want us to? Ban’t she hungry to see us do it? Ban’t she a female, like the rest of ’em? Come on, or I’ll beat you like a dog.”

“What’s the good of making an exhibition of yourself, Richard? I was ‘runner-up’ in the amateur heavy-weights two years running. I can smother you, but I don’t want to.”

“Doan’t blow so loud afore you see what ’tis to fight a chap in the right,” cried Richard, with passion.

So we shift our standpoint at the beck of chance, and call virtue to our aid when accidentally enrolled under her banner. He stood where he had lied to his little brother and trampled Davey’s fish into the ground and laughed at the child’s rage.

“You’d better go,” said Maybridge to Jane. “I’m awfully sorry about this, but—”

He was cut short, for the other rushed in and struck him a heavy blow on the side of the face. Anthony shook his head and snorted.“If you will have it, you shall,” he said; “but I’m sorry, because you’re right and I’m in the wrong—more or less.”

Jane fled at the first blow, and the battle began. Maybridge quickly proved the looseness of his great limbs was combined with other gifts proper to a boxer. He smarted doubly; from the other’s insults and from the sense that they were deserved. He had ill-used Richard, and his dislike for him, once loosened, was proportionately bitter.

Stung thus, the young man let his strength and skill have vent. He took and gave some punishment, but he was a disciplined fighter, and very easily kept out the heavy rushes of the keeper. Then, at the first opportunity which Richard offered, Maybridge knocked him squarely off his legs with a tremendous blow over the heart. He rose slowly, but the edge of his strength was gone. His anger nearly blinded him before this reverse, while Anthony, on the other hand, had fought himself into a good humour. Presently at close quarters he hit rather low, and Dick cursed him.

“Fight fair, you devil!” he gasped.

“Fair enough,” puffed the other. “Well up on your small ribs you’ll see the mark in the morning.”

By mutual consent they rested presently; then the battle was renewed, and, knowing himself beaten at every point of the game, Richard Daccombe let his temper loose and fell to fighting like a dog rather than a man. Now it was the other’s turn to cry caution; but the keeper had no ears—he only lusted to do injury. Once Maybridge might have knocked him out of time, but he desisted; then, angered by a brutal kick on the calf of the leg, he got inside Dick’s arms, clenched, gripped the smaller man like a bear, and with a cross buttock hurled him heavily backward. They had fought to the river’s bank, and now, luckily for the looser’s neck, he fell into the water. He struggled to his feet, and stood a moment where moonlight played upon the foaming stream. Then he crawled to the bank, and had scarcely strength to climb it. There he lay panting for some time. Anthony brought him his coat, and offered to give him an arm home; but Dick declined, and getting on to his feet with difficulty, walked along beside his conqueror.

“This is the beginning,” he said—“not the end. If you don’t leave Cross Ways before the week’s out, you never will—not alive.”

“Don’t talk rot like that. I thought you were a good sportsman anyway, but I see you’re not; and that’s the worst you can say against any man. I was going—God’s my judge that I’m telling you the truth—I was going away to-morrow—for a time, at any rate. She wished it. But now—now you threaten me as if you were a murderer, I shan’t move, not an inch. And if there’s any blackguardly attempt on your part to do me an injury, I’ll break your neck, Daccombe; so now you’re warned. Anyway, you have shown that I was right, for any girl would be a madwoman to marry such a lunatic.”

“Talk on, now, if you’ve got the wind to do it,” answered Richard, “but the last word will be mine.”

CHAPTER VI

A black malignity dominated the beaten man after his reverse; and, inasmuch as Jane Stanberry, now at the cross ways of her life, fell from honour and played a base part out of fear, her lover continued to believe that his enemy alone was responsible for Jane’s weakness. He blamed the girl, but his love did not diminish, and he still supposed that Anthony Maybridge once removed, she would return to him with eyes that again saw clearly. He attributed his conqueror’s conduct to a tremendous strength of purpose, whereas mere feebleness and an amorous nature were responsible for it. The woman was at least as guilty as the man; and now an added blame belonged to her, for while Anthony henceforth openly declared himself the rival of Richard, she held the balance a little longer between them—chiefly from fear of Mrs. Daccombe. Her decision was made, yet very carefully she concealed it, and Richard continued in error.

From his mistaken conclusion, and smarting still with venom bred of the wounds Anthony had inflicted, the keeper proceeded to a criminal deed. Such active hatred as he now felt stuck at nothing, and within a fortnight of his reverse came the evil inspiration that he waited for.

A veiled antagonism reigned between the men after their battle; then matters seemed to sink into customary course. Richard absented himself from home more than usual; Anthony abandoned shooting, and took to hunting instead.

Once more it happened that the warrener saw a light burning in No. 4 Case House by night, and, passing by, heard Maybridge within, whistling to pass the time until Jane’s arrival. Richard slunk by awhile, and presently, like a ghost, Jane flitted past him. A flash of light fell upon the waste as she opened the door; then all grew dark again. Still the wronged lover remained within earshot, and accident killed his sudden gust of passion against the girl, for he heard a sob and listened to a weak, vain protest from her against the double part she was constrained to play. She accused Anthony of drawing her to him against all honour and right feeling; whereupon the listener departed, not desirous to hear more, and confirmed in his belief.

He visited the old Case House in the middle of the next day, and ground his teeth at sight of a rough carving—two hearts with familiar initials beneath them. Then he examined the concealed blasting powder, and surveyed its position with respect to the main walls of the building. Satisfied of this, he proceeded into the air, took a heavy clasp knife, dug down a foot beneath the grass and turf and removed two bricks from the foundation of the Case House. Within them was a thin layer of concrete; the matchboarding followed; and then came the gunpowder. Calculating the exact spot of his excavation, Richard entered the hut and pursued his work from inside, after carefully moving the powder beyond reach of any spark that might be struck from his attack on the concrete. With light, numerous blows he gained his end, and soon had a clean hole running from beneath the magazine to the ground outside. This he filled with gunpowder, replaced the mass of the explosive above it, returned the bricks to their original positions, and covered up the space outside with turf and dry fern.

A scrap of touchwood and a match would do all the rest.

Richard Daccombe completed his preparations just in time, for as he moved away to the Moor, he saw his brother Davey in the valley. Thereupon Dick hid behind a rock to surprise the youngster unpleasantly should his goal be the Case House. But Davey had either seen his brother, or knew that he was not far distant. At least, he showed himself too wary to run any risk, and pursued an innocent matter of climbing a pine tree for a wood-pigeon’s nest. Nor did he come down again until Richard had gone upon his way to the warren.

CHAPTER VII

Events by no means conspired to shake the keeper’s evil determination. Lulled to fancied security and a belief that his indifference indicated a change of mind toward her, Jane continued her attention to Dick; and he abstained from upbraiding her, for he took this display to be love, and felt more than ever assured that, Maybridge once out of the way, the girl would waken as from a dream to the reality of his regard and worship. Her conduct, indeed, obscured his own affection, but he came of a class that takes life and its tender relations callously. The only ardent and worthy emotion that had ever made his heart throb quicker was this girl. His love was still alive, nor could anger kill it while he continued blind to the truth that she no longer cared for him.

A fortnight after his visit to the Case House, Dick descended by night from his den upon the high moor, and the dim flicker of a flame he had long desired to see strung his nerves to steel. For fulfilment of his plan it was necessary that he should come pat on the interval between the arrival of Anthony Maybridge at this tryst and Jane’s subsequent approach. Twice he had been too late; to-night he arrived in time, and his opportunity waited for him. Maybridge was alone. The light burnt in silence. Then came a solitary footfall on the hollow floor above the gunpowder.

Daccombe had calculated every action that would combine to complete and perfect the deed now before him. Nor had he disdained to consider the result. No witness could rise up against him; his enemy would be blown out of physical existence, and his own subsequent declaration that some tons of blasting powder remained forgotten in the old magazine must serve to explain the rest. A spark from Anthony’s pipe would be a satisfactory solution.

The man set about his murder swiftly and stealthily. He had already driven a heavy staple into the door of the Case House, and now, without a sound, he fastened his victim firmly in, using some lengths of brass rabbit wire for the purpose. Then he crept down below the level of the building, scratched away the turf and fern and moved the loosened bricks. He felt the powder dry under his hand, brought a large lump of rotten wood from his breast pocket, where he had long carried it, and struck a match. Soon the touchwood glowed, and he set it down, leapt from his work and hastened away along the path by which Jane must presently approach. Thus he designed to intercept her progress, and, upon some pretence or excuse, draw her from the zone of danger. As to that last point, however, he was doubtful. The amount of the powder he could not accurately tell, and the extent of the explosion remained to be seen. Richard calculated that three minutes, if not a longer period, must elapse before fire would gnaw up the dead wood and reach the powder; and now, as he moved hastily away, the seconds lengthened into minutes, and the minutes most horribly dragged. An infinite abyss of time widened out between the deed and its effect. He lived his life again; and still he peered through the darkness with his eyes, and strained upon the silence with his ears, that he might not let Jane Stanberry pass him and go ignorantly to destruction.

He was a quarter of a mile from the Case House, when it seemed as though the heavens were opened and Doomsday suddenly loosed upon the world. An awful and withering explosion swept the glen like a storm. First there leapt aloft a pillar of pale fire, that rose and spread as the eruption of a volcano spreads. The terrific glare painted long miles of the Moor, and like the hand of lightning, revealed the shaggy crowns of the tors on many a distant hill; while, long before its livid sheaf of flame had sunk, came such a crash and bellow of sound as might burst from the upheaval of a world in earthquake. Upon this appalling detonation a wave of air swept in sudden tempest. Richard was blown off his feet and dashed to the ground; and as he fell, the hills echoed back the explosion in crashing reverberations that rolled out of the darkness, rose and fell, and rose again, until, after a hundred repetitions flung hither and thither over the peaks of the land, they sank through a growling diminuendo into silence. And the silence was terrific by contrast with the awful clamour it succeeded, even as the darkness was intense that followed upon such an unwonted and far-flung glare of light.

Richard Daccombe got upon his feet, and the tinkle of broken glass was in his ears, with the murmur of affrighted voices; for the concussion had shattered nearly every pane at Cross Ways, and mightily alarmed the dwellers there.

When he reached home the young keeper found his parents already out-of-doors, with the whole household assembled about them.

Mary Daccombe praised God at sight of her son uninjured.

“’Tis the end of the world, by the sound of it,” she said. “Where be Davey to?”

His father questioned Richard, and the man declared his ignorance of all particulars.“An explosion at the old powder-mills, or else a bolt from heaven,” he answered. “I must have passed by the very place, I reckon, not five minutes before the upstore.”

“A thunder-planet, for sartain,” declared an ancient soul, whose few teeth chattered between his words. “I can call home when a com-com-comet was reigning fifty years an’ more agone, an’ ’twas just such open weather as us have had o’ late.”

Mr. Daccombe felt anxious for his stock in certain byres and cow-houses that lay to the west of the powder-mills. But first he held up a lantern and counted the company.

“Be us all here?” he asked.

“Davey’s out somewheers,” answered his wife; “ess, an’ Jane Stanberry be—” She broke off, and looked at the farmer.

“Down-long, I s’pose,” he said carelessly; then he turned to Richard. “Us can’t blink these meetings between ’em, Dick. Best man wins where a maid’s the prize; or which she thinks be the best. Awnly God send her ban’t in the powder-mills to-night.”

“’Tis most certain she be,” answered Mary Daccombe. “Her didn’t know as the young man—Mr. Maybridge—was called off sudden to Moreton to serve ’pon a committee for the Hunt Dinner next month. A chap rode out, and he saddled his mare hisself and galloped off we him directly after he’d ate his meat.”

“Jane didn’t know?” asked Richard.

“No, she went out counting to find him, I’m afraid.”

“An’ he’m at Moreton?”

The man asked in a voice so strange that none failed to note it, even in this dark moment of fear and turmoil.

“Her went to wait for him usual place, no doubt,” said Jonathan Daccombe. “Us had better come an’ look around for her, an’ Davey too—not to name the things in the long byre by the wood.”

A hideous cry suddenly cut Jonathan short, for a storm had swept the sinner’s brain upon these words. He saw what he had done, and the shock overset the balance of his mind.

“Come!” he cried; “I’ve killed her, I’ve ended her days in a scatter of blood and flesh! Nought to show for the butivul round body of her now. But her shall have Christian burial, if ’tis awnly a hair of her head left to put in the churchyard; an’ I’ll mourn for her on my knees, afore they string me up!”

“God’s goodness! what gabble be this?” asked his father.

“And Maybridge still alive, wi’ no smell of fire about him. I’ll—I’ll—”He broke off and gazed round him wildly.

“Upon the Moreton road as he comes home-along!” he said. Then the wretch turned to hurry away. At the first step, however, he stopped and stood as still as a statue, for he had heard what was hidden from the ears of the rest. Then they too caught the sound of footsteps and a murmuring in the night. Richard remained without moving, and his eyes glared into the dark, and his jaw had fallen. Then, taking shape and coming slowly into the radius of lantern light, there moved a woman and a boy.

Jane Stanberry approached, holding Davey by the hand; and at sight of her Richard Daccombe screamed out his shattered senses, and fled as one possessed of an evil spirit. In vain they made search for him by night and day, and it was not until more than eight-and-forty hours had passed that they found him wandering in the great central loneliness insane. There they ministered to him, and brought him home; and time so dealt with him that he sank into a harmless and haunted idiocy—a horror for his father, a knife in his mother’s heart.

Now it happened that Richard’s brother, upon the keeper’s departure from the Case House on a day already noted, had descended from his pine tree, made close investigation of the elder’s deed, and guessed that such preparations were directed against one man. From that day until the time of the catastrophe, David kept silent watch upon all occasions when Jane and Anthony Maybridge met there. Hidden within a dry drain some ten yards distant, he had played sentinel until the night of Richard’s revenge. Then he had crept from his cover the moment the other’s back was turned, reached the smouldering touchwood, and with amazing courage extinguished it. Afterward, releasing the girl as quickly as possible, and bidding her run for her life to the shelter of a grinding mill two hundred yards distant, he had once more set the rotten wood on fire and hastened after Jane.

She, mystified and indignant, was also conscious that the boy must be obeyed, and so fled as he ordered her. Yet both would have perished but for their protection behind the stout ruin of the grinding mill. And now, the fear of death upon their faces, they hurried trembling home, and Nemesis came with them.

* * *

To-day a black-bearded man, with brown eyes and a mouth always open, shambles about the blasted heart of the old powder-mill. He babbles to himself with many a frown and pregnant nod and look askance; sometimes he watches the trout in the river; sometimes he plucks feverishly at the blossoms of the broom and spearwort and other yellow flowers. These he stamps underfoot as one stamps fire. Davey is his brother’s keeper, and shall be seen always at hand. At his word Richard Daccombe obeys like a dog—shrinks with fear if the boy is angry, fawns and laughs when the boy is kind.