THE AMERICAN PRISONER

CHAPTER I
CATER'S BEAM

The huge and solitary but featureless elevation of Cater's Beam on Dartmoor arrests few eyes. Seen from the central waste, one hog-backed ridge swells along the southern horizon, and its majestic outline, unfretted by tor or forest, describes the curve of a projectile discharged at gentle elevation. No detail relieves the solemn bulk of this hill, and upon it ages have left but little imprint of their passing. Time rolls over the mountain like a mist, and the mighty granite arch of the Beam emerges eternal and unchanged. Its tough integument of peat and heath and matted herbage answers only to the call of the seasons, and it bears grass, bloom, berry, as it bore them for palÆolithic man and his flocks. Now, like a leopard, the Beam crouches black-spotted by the swaling fires of spring; now, in the late autumn time, its substance is coated with tawny foliage, scarlet-splashed under the low sun; now, dwarfed by snow, the great hill takes shape of an arctic bear. With spring the furzes flame again, and wonderful mosses—purple, gold, and emerald green—light the marshes or jewel the bank at every rill; and with summer the ling shines out, the asphodel burns in the bog, cloud-shadows drop their deep blue mantles upon the mountain's bosom, and the hot air dances mile on mile. Beneath Cater's Beam, and dwarfed thereby, arise the twin turrets of Fox Tor; while not far distant from these most lonely masses and pinnacles of granite shall be found the work of men's hands. Beside the desolate morasses and storm-scarred wastes that here lie like a cup upon Dartmoor, a stone cross lifts its head, and ruins of a human habitation moulder back to the dust.

In nettles, stereobate deep, stands Fox Tor Farm, and the plant—sure and faithful follower of man—is significant upon this sequestered fastness; for hither it came with those who toiled to reclaim the region in time past, and no other nettles shall be found for miles. Other evidences of human activity appear around the perishing dwelling-house, where broken walls, decaying outbuildings, and tracts of cleared land publish their testimony to a struggle with the Moor. Great apparent age marks these remains, and the weathered and shattered entrances, the lichened drip-stones, the empty joist-holes, point to a respectable antiquity. Yet one hundred years ago this habitation did not exist. Its entire life—its erection and desertion, its prosperity and downfall—are crowded within the duration of a century. In 1800 no stone stood upon another; long ago the brief days of Fox Tor Farm were numbered, and already for fifty years it has written human hope, ambition, failure upon the wilderness.

One fragment of wrought granite remains, and the everlasting nettles beneath shall be found heraldically depicted upon a shattered doorway. There, where the ghost of a coat-of-arms may still be deciphered, Time gnaws at the badge of the Malherbs: Or, chev. gules inter three nettle-leaves vert.

Upon the summit of Cater's Beam, some ninety years ago, a member of that ancient and noble clan sat mounted, gazed into the far-spreading valley beneath him and saw that it was good and green. Thereupon he held his quest accomplished, and determined here to build himself a sure abode, that his cadet branch of the Malherb race might win foothold on the earth, and achieve as many generations of prosperity in the future as history recorded of his ancestors in the past. Seen a mile distant, sharp eyes upon that August day had marked a spot creep like a fly along the crest of Cater's Beam, crawl here and there, sink down to Fox Tor, and remain stationary upon its stony side for a full hour. Observed closely, one had watched a man at the crossroads of life—a man who struggled to mould his own fate and weave the skein of his days to his own pattern. Here he sat on a great bay horse and pursued the path of his future, as oblivious to its inevitable changes and chances as he was to a black cloud-ridge that now lifted dark fringes against the northern sky and came frowning over the Moor against the course of the wind.

Maurice Malherb was close on fifty, and he had chosen to plough the earth for his partage in the world's work. A younger son of his house, he had turned from the junior's usual portion, and, by some accident of character, refused a commission and sought the peaceful occupations of agriculture. He had already wasted some portion of his patrimony upon land near Exeter; and he was seeking new outlet for his energies when arose a wide-spread ardour for cultivation of Dartmoor. The age of enterprise dawned there; "newtake" tenements sprang up like mushrooms upon this waste; and a region that had mostly slept since Elizabethan miners furrowed its breast and streamed its rivers for tin, awoke. As a grim crown to the Moor, Prince Town and its gigantic War Prison was created; while round about young woods budded, homesteads appeared, and wide tracts of the Royal Forest were rented to the speculative and the sanguine.

Maurice Malherb was among those first attracted by the prospect. A famous Dartmoor hero had influenced him in this decision, and he was now spending a week with Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt, at Tor Royal, and examining the knight's operations in husbandry. He saw Dartmoor for the first time, and the frank, stern face of it challenged him. For three days he rode forth alone; and then he wandered to Cater's Beam and discovered the dewy cup where rivers rise beneath it. To the right and left he looked and smiled. His dark eyes drank up the possibilities of the land. Already he pictured dykes for draining of the marshes; already he saw crops ripening and slow oxen drawing the ploughshare in the valley. Of the eternal facts, hard as granite and stern as nature, that lurked here under the dancing summer air, he knew nothing. The man was fifteen hundred feet above the sea, in the playground of the west wind. The inveterate peat encompassed him—the hungry, limeless peat, that eats bone like a dog and fattens upon the life-blood of those who try to tame it. He gazed upon a wilderness where long winters bury the land in snow or freeze it to the granite core for months—save where warm springs twinkle in the mosses and shine like wet eyes out of a white face. Here the wise had observed and passed upon their way; but Maurice Malherb was not wise. August ruled the hour; the ling bloomed under the heat; a million insects murmured and made a pleasant melody. Dartmoor for a moment smiled, and weary of the tame monotony of green meads, hedges elm-clad, and fields of ruddy earth, Malherb caught hope from this crystal air and enormous scene outspread, fell to picturing a notable future, and found his pulses leap to the great plans that thronged his mind.

He was of a square and sturdy habit of body. A clean-shorn countenance, deep-set black eyes beneath black brows, a large mouth underhung, and a nose very broad but finely moulded, were the distinguishing attributes of his face. Restlessness was alike the characteristic of his expression and of his nature. Generosity and pride dominated him in turn. His failures were the work of other people; his successes he claimed himself. His wife, his son, his daughter, the blood in his veins, the wine in his cellar, were all the best in the world. His demonian temper alone he deplored; yet in that, also, he found matter for occasional satisfaction; since, by a freak of atavism, he resembled at every physical and mental point an ancestor from the spacious times, whose deeds on deep and unknown seas had won him the admiration and friendship of Drake.

Malherb already saw a homestead spring upwards upon the green hill beneath Fox Tor. There would he lift his eyrie; there should successive generations look back and honour their founder; there—thunder broke suddenly upon his dreams and the bay horse shifted his fore-feet nervously beneath him. Whereupon he lifted his eyes, and found that a great storm was at hand. Unperceived it had crept out of the north while he stood wrapped in meditation; and now a ghastly glamour extended beneath it, for the Moor began to look like a sick thing, huddled here all bathed with weak yellow light from a fainting sun. Solitary blots and wisps of cloud darkened the sky and heralded the solid and purple van of the thunderstorm. All insect music ceased, and a hush, unbroken by one whisper, fell upon the hills. Cater's Beam suggested some prodigious, couchant creature, watchful yet fearless. Thus it awaited the familiar onset of the lightning, whose daggers had broken in its granite bosom a thousand times and left no scar.

The wanderer spurred his horse, and regained firm foothold on the crest of the land; then, bending to a torrent of rain, he galloped westward where the gaunt wards and barracks of Prince Town towered above the desolation. But the tempest broke long before Malherb reached safety; darkness swallowed him and he struggled storm-foundered among the unfamiliar hills. Then fortune sent another traveller, and a young man, riding bare-backed upon a pony, came into view. Sudden lightning showed the youth, and, waiting for a tremendous volley of thunder that followed upon it, Malherb shouted aloud. His voice, though deep and sonorous, sounded thin as the pipe of a bird thus lifted immediately after the peal.

"Hold there! Where am I, boy? Which is the way to Tor Royal?"

"You be going right, sir," shouted the lad; "but 'tis a long road this weather. Best to follow me, if I may make so bold, an I'll bring 'e to shelter in five minutes."

The offer was good, and Mr. Malherb accepted with a nod.

"Go as fast as you can; I'll keep behind you."

Both horses were moorland bred, for the visitor rode a stout hackney lent by his host. Yet Malherb had to shake up his steed to keep the native in sight. Presently the youth dismounted, and his companion became aware of a low cabin rising like a beehive before him. It stood at the foot of a gentle hill, within a rough enclosure of stone. Some few acres of land had been reclaimed about it, and not far distant, through the murk of the rain, its granite gleaming azure under the glare of the lightning, stood an ancient and famous stone.

"Now I know where I stand," said the stranger. "I came this way three hours since. There rises Siward's Cross—is it not so?"

"Ess, your worship, 'tis so. An' this cot do belong to my gran'mother. 'Tis a poor hole for quality, but stormtight. You please to go in that door an' I'll take your hoss after 'e. Us do all live under the same thatch—folks an' beastes."

The boy took both bridles, then kicked open the door of the hut, and shouted to his grandmother.

"Here's a gentleman almost drownded. Put on a handful of sticks an' make a blaze so as he can catch heat, for he be so wet as a frog!"

A loud, clear voice answered from the inner gloom. "Sticks! Sticks! Be I made o' money to burn sticks at your bidding? If peat keeps the warmth in my carcase, 'twill do the like for him—king or tinker."

Maurice Malherb entered the cabin, then started back with an oath as an old woman rose and confronted him. She, too, exhibited the liveliest astonishment.

"Lovey Lee!"

"Ess fay, Lovey Lee it is," she answered slowly; "an' you'm Maurice Malherb or the living daps of him. To think! Ten years! An' all your curses haven't come home to roost neither by the looks of you."

"No," he replied. "They've hit the mark rather—or you are playing miser still and saving your crusts and tatters and living as you loved to live."

"I be an old, abused creature," she said. "I starve here wi' scarce a penny in the world, an' your faither's paltry legacy growing smaller day by day. I'll outlast it an' die wanting food, an' laugh at churchyard worms, since there'll be nought of me for 'em to breed in."

She rose and proclaimed herself a woman of extraordinary stature—a female colossus of bones. She stood six feet three inches, and, but for her wild and long grey hair, looked like a man masquerading.

Lovey Lee was a widow, and had spent most of her life in the service of the Malherbs. At twenty years of age she married a gamekeeper, and, twelve months later, her husband lost his life in a poaching affray. Then Lovey had returned to service. A posthumous girl was born to her, and the son of that daughter, now a lad of sixteen, dwelt with his grandmother upon the Moor. Mrs. Lee was clad in rags, and barely wore enough of them for decency. Her great gnarled feet were naked; her huge hands protruded from tattered sleeves; and the round ulnar condyles at her wrists were as big as pigeon's eggs. Lean, wiry, and as hard as adamant, the miser lived in this fastness with her cattle and her daughter's son. Mystery shrouded her doings in the past, she seldom spoke, and seldom appeared among the moorland haunts of men. Therefore humble folks feared her for a witch, and avoided her by day or night. In reality, the passion of her life and the mainspring of every action was greed; and she exceeded the vulgar miser in this—that intrinsic worth, not alone the rude glitter of money, commanded her worship. Value was the criterion; she rose superior to the chink of gold; she loved a diamond as well as the coins that represented it; or a piece of land; or a milch cow. Her education in the house of the Malherbs lifted her to some breadth of mind; and when the head of the family had passed away, ten years before the beginning of these events, a black cloud hung over this woman's behaviour, and turned her old master's children against her.

Now the man of all others most involved by this dame's doubtful conduct stood before her eyes and asked an abrupt question.

"What did you do with the Malherb amphora, Lovey Lee?"

CHAPTER II
THE MALHERB AMPHORA

Upon the death of Sir Nicholas Malherb, his second son, Maurice, found himself in possession of fifteen thousand pounds and the famous Malherb amphora, an heirloom of the family. By arrangement with the elder brother, Maurice took the amphora instead of its equivalent in cash, and thus the succeeding baronet was richer by twenty thousand pounds, which more fully answered his purposes than the ancient treasure.

Concerning this gem a word must be spoken. While slightly inferior to the Portland vase in size, its workmanship equalled that of the more famous curio, and it was esteemed by connoisseurs as much superior to the Auldjo vase, or another marvellous example of similar cameo glass, still the acquisition of Naples. In Maurice Malherb's amphora, a bygone vitrarius had immortalised his art. The opaque bubble of white glass was coated with cerulean blue, and upon this surface another film of white had been spread. With the gem engraver's tools these strata were sculptured into a most exquisite design of little Loves playing hide and seek amid the foliage of the acanthus. Herein genius had accomplished a masterpiece, and all men capable of appreciating it wished Maurice Malherb joy of the treasure. To desire the amphora in place of its value was characteristic of his fine taste and spirit, and also symbolic of his wayward disposition, since money had been of far greater service to him in his agricultural pursuits. Then a catastrophe overtook Malherb, for within a week of his father's death, the amphora disappeared. The bubble of glass vanished like a bubble of water. Upon the morning of a certain day Maurice had moved it from its place in a locked cabinet, displayed it to relations and put it back again; but, returning to this receptacle within two hours, he found the amphora was no longer there. All that man could do men did to recover the treasure; but not one sign of the amphora nor one shadowy clue as to its situation rewarded expert search. Then that nine days' wonder waned, and only the sufferer still smarted under his loss. He called upon his brother to make good this grave decrement of fortune, but the heir refused to do so, and a breach in the family widened from that hour.

Maurice Malherb alone of all those interested in this theft had suspected the old servant, Lovey Lee; yet knowledge of her character and peculiar propensities led him most stoutly to believe that she was the thief of the amphora. His father had trusted and honoured this gaunt creature. He had admired her remarkable physical courage, thrift, and common sense; and while Mrs. Lee always annoyed and disgusted the family, Sir Nicholas himself professed open respect for her, and found her secretly useful in ways not published to the world. Yet, upon his death, Lovey declared herself beyond measure shocked and disappointed at a legacy of one thousand pounds which the knight bequeathed to her. She fumed and fretted, spoke of unknown services, and loudly cried that the dead had inflicted upon her a cruel wrong.

Presently she vanished unregretted from the home of the Malherbs; and after her departure Maurice began to associate the old servant with his loss. The woman was traced and surprised. She posed as one deeply injured, and proved to demonstration that she knew nothing of the amphora. Yet its owner was not convinced, and within a year he himself sought out Lovey Lee in hope to make a bargain with her and recover his property by paying a generous sum and promising to take no step against her. She had, however, forfeited her life if guilty, for men and women hanged on light accusations a century ago. But Malherb never found the opportunity he desired, because Mrs. Lee had quite disappeared when he made search for her. During ten years he heard nothing of her fate; then chance threw him into the old woman's company again under this fury of a Dartmoor storm; and his first thought was the lost treasure.

In answer to the straight question, Lovey revealed both power of words and subtlety of mind. Her eyes glittered; each wrinkle in her face gathered itself together, as though to repulse an enemy; her sharp nose looked eager to stab him. She showed her teeth, and Malherb noted that they were white and strong.

"Still harping on that gimcrack; still babbling to the world that 'twas I stole it! What a fool must you be—an' not the first Malherb as was that—to think I've got your fortune. Look around you. Put your nose in that cupboard. You'll find barley bread an' rancid grease—not the Malherb amphora. Do 'e see thicky wall? 'Tis piled o' peat, an' I live 'pon one side an' my donkey an' pony an' cows 'pon t'other. They save fuel in winter; they keep the air warm with their breath. I often go an' sleep with 'em when 'tis too cold to bear my bones. But they say that your glass toy was worth twenty thousand pounds. Even a thief might have got rid of it for thousands. An' should I be here—should I make a jackass my pillow, an' live on berries and acorns like a bird, an' stew snails to my broth, if I'd gotten thousands? One dirty thousand I did have—may your faither roast for his mean trick—an' this here slack-limbed great boy, Jack Lee, to keep with it. But——"

"Hear me!" interrupted Malherb. "What you say would be true enough if it was not Lovey Lee who spoke. D'you think I don't remember you and your ways—you that sold your good food and lived on orts; that bartered your clothes and hated wearing any raiment that was better than a scarecrow's? Possession of my vase would be the light of your life. Not because it is lovely; not because the genius of man never devised nor his hand fashioned a nobler thing in such sort; but because it is worth twenty thousand pounds, and because to be able to hug that wealth all at once to your evil heart would be paradise to you. That is why I believed you were the thief; and still believe it."

She snarled at him, then made a slow answer.

"Believe as you please. I'll be very happy to hang for it—when you find it. An' ban't no joy to me to see you under my roof, for you hate me an' think evil against me, though I served your parents so faithful as the humble can serve the great, an' nursed your youngest brother at my own breast."

"'Twas chance, not intention, led me," he answered. "A few years ago I longed to meet you, and make you an offer. Now the opportunity has come. I'll be reasonable, as I always am. You cannot take the amphora with you when you die. At least see that my son——"

"Go your ways an' trouble me no more!" she cried, and Malherb flashed into a passion.

"As to that, if this hole is your home, I'm like to trouble you not a little, you cross-grained hag. See there—where the heart of the storm is bursting now, at the other side of this great marsh—there you'll presently find a granite house lifting itself four-square to the winds. I also have chosen the Moor for a home. May that knowledge bring you to better wisdom."

The old woman was deeply interested by this intelligence.

"What! You be coming? Then you haven't flourished down country after all, but must climb up here an' begin again. You're mad! An' 'tis a wicked thing to steal the Moor acre by acre as you an' the likes of you be doing now. An' Duchy always ready with its cursed greedy paws stretched out to take your money."

"I shall be a Moor-man, too, and enjoy rights of Venville," he said, more to himself than to the woman.

"'Tis a wicked thing and flat robbery," she repeated. "All the countryside be raw under it; but for what count the rights of the poor? All the best of the Moor—all the best strolls for grazing, where the grass be greenest—all the lew spots—all stolen away one after t'other an' barred against the lawful commoners; an' not a hand lifted. That hill be where my cows do graze an' roam. Now you'll drive 'em from their proper lairs, an' they'll have to bide on the coarse grass, an' I'll be stinted of milk, as is my poor livelihood."

"You'll still have enough to fill the amphora," said Maurice Malherb; then he turned to the boy.

"Bring you my horse, lad. The storm is past. I can get on to Tor Royal now."

"An' tell Tyrwhitt what I tell you," said Lavey, "that him an' the rest be no better'n a pack of thieves an' cadgers. 'Tis a hanging matter if us steals the goose from the common; but nobody says nought when the upper people steal the common from the goose. There'll come a day of reckoning for Duchy yet—an' Tyrwhitt too!"

She stood and watched him mount, with her bent head thrust out of the door, like a gigantic fowl looking out of a pen.

Malherb made no answer, but turned to the boy.

"There's a crown for you, youngster, and I wish you a better grandmother."

He went his way and the old woman twitched her long nose and stared after him.

"Born fool—born fool—to waste what he've got left on this here wilderness. An' so awful nigh to my——" She broke off and turned to the boy, John.

"What did he give e', Jack? Quick! Out with it!"

As a matter of custom the youth gave up his money.

"A crown! Just the same great silly gawk he always was. Never knowed anybody with such large notions touching money. But them notions breed thin purses."

"A very fine gentleman all the same, granny, an' a rides butiful, an' have a flashing eye, an' a voice as makes you run to do his bidding. He'm awful proud, but I like him."

"'Like him!' You ungrateful little toad, you ought to cuss him for speaking so wicked to your grandam."

"There was laughter in his eyes more'n once."

"Go an' pick snails; go an' pick snails! They'll swarm after the rain. I see the ducks gulching 'em by the quart. My snail-barrel be running low."

She watched young John start to obey, then spoke to herself.

"'Likes him!' Maybe he does. Blood's thicker'n water."

CHAPTER III
BESIDE EXE

Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt loudly applauded the decision to which his guest had come, for it was the knight's conviction that Dartmoor's high places offered health, work, and reward to all men. Himself a friend of the Prince Regent, he commanded attention from other personages also, and his own estates by the new settlement of Prince Town grew rapidly; his own enterprises awoke a sanguine spirit in others.

Three days after the thunderstorm, Mr. Malherb sat with the High Bailiff of Dartmoor at the Duchy of Cornwall office; and, such was his impetuous energy, that within two months the walls of Fox Tor Farm began to rise. From Lew Trenchard came the slates (a circumstance that set men wondering, for reed thatch covered most heads upon the Moor in those days); and teams of a dozen oxen struggled over the waste, dragging sledges laden with stone. Roads there were none, and no wheeled vehicle had ever entered that wild valley. Malherb took up his temporary residence at an ancient tenement farm within five miles of his land, and daily he rode to the scene of action, planned and plotted, ordered and countermanded, now entered upon passing periods of doubt, now threw aside his dilemmas and turned to problems more easy of solution.

In the placid homestead beside Exe awoke stir and bustle too, for the farm on the Moor was now progressing rapidly, and Annabel Malherb and her daughter Grace had learnt that their new dwelling was to be ready within a year—a time quite short in those leisurely days for the transference of a home. Mother and daughter contemplated the great change brooding over their existence, with lively hopes and fears. The enterprise loomed tremendous to their simple minds; but both trusted the master in their hearts, if at times their heads whispered treachery.

The wife was of an ancient pattern, and set high religious significance on marriage vows; the child loved her stormy father, and bravely stood for him in the face of a critical and unsympathetic world. To Malherb's faults these women blinded themselves; his virtues they sang at all seasons. From Carew stock the matron sprang, and her noble blood, her steadfastness of view, her large trust in the goodness of Divine purpose, was all her dowry, for wealth she had none. Grace Malherb resembled her mother in mind and bearing. She was a simple, generous-hearted maiden, and her life had passed without storm or stress. She moved in the scented Devon lanes; she gathered the eglantine and wild roses in spring, at autumn plucked the scarlet corals of the iris or those glimmering green mosses that made fair vestment for the red earth. But now her eyes were lifted to Dartmoor, where its hills rose shadowy across the western sky; and awe and wonder widened the limits of her mind, and mystery awoke in dreams and added beauty to her face.

The imperious farmer had a whim to keep his wife and daughter away from their future home until it should be ready to receive them; and since they were wholly ignorant of the great table-land, the contrast between Fox Tor with its adjacencies and the meadow farm by Exe was destined to come upon both women with a force almost bewildering. Even to the thin voices of the labouring men, their chastened outlook upon life and their estimate of happiness, all was changed.

The attitude of Annabel and Grace Malherb upon this radical transformation will appear. From agricultural failure and depression in the valleys they were at least well contented to escape.

On an autumn day they walked and talked together upon a meadow path by the river. Maurice Malherb was returning from the Moor for a while to look after his business, and here his wife and daughter waited for him.

"That your father has built a house is well," declared Mrs. Malherb, "for, come what may to his many projects, an abiding place of our own will be a source of peace to me."

"And no more coal bills!" cried Grace. "Father has said that we shall dig our coal out of the earth within sight of home."

"'Tis peat he means—a very good form of warmth—yet I doubt for the cooking."

"Barbara would have made shift with it. Oh, mother, what shall we do without her?"

"I cannot guess yet."

"To think of all new servants—all new—but that horrid old Kek!"

Mrs. Malherb smiled.

"Kekewich is a sort of skeleton at life's feast. The sour truth and nothing but the truth he utters. Yet truth's a tonic, and your father knows it."

"Truth is often very impertinent—especially as Kek tells it. If any other man spoke to father as he does, he would soon be measuring his length on the ground."

"It shows my husband's marvellous judgment that Kekewich never angers him."

"To me the man is merely a piece of earth animated. Such stuff would never have grown a good cabbage, so some wicked fairy took it and made Kek. I'm sure he'll be a wet blanket on hope, and, according to father, the mists are wet blankets enough up there."

"Kekewich suffers much pain of body, and it makes him harsh. He is an honest man, and your father gets good out of him. That is enough for us. He is at least the soul of common sense."

But Grace shook her head.

"'Tis no more common sense to look always on the dark side of things than, like dear father, to be over-hopeful."

"The golden mean——" murmured her mother.

"Rainbow gold," answered the girl. "Human nature cannot find it. What——? But here comes Kek himself. He looks spry and peart for once. That bodes trouble for somebody."

A gate opened upon the path, and in the red-gold light of evening a man approached them. The ruddy earth had dyed his garments to its rich hue, had soaked into his clothes and body. He seemed incarnate clay. His frame had crooked, his hair was grizzled. His mouth was like the stamp of a gouge upon putty, and at first glance a grin appeared to sit upon his face; but, better seen, one noted that the distortion was accidental, and that in reality his features were stamped with the eternal sadness of suffering.

"Three barrow pigs be just drownded," he said. "I seed 'em fighting in the water; then they went down an' comed up again, an' squeaked proper till the river chucked 'em. 'Tis always what I said would happen."

"Where was Bob?" asked Grace, with much concern. "The blame will fall upon him."

"So it will, but that won't bring the pigs alive again; though they'll do very well for common people to eat if we can get 'em ashore inside twenty-four hours."

The sound of a horse's hoofs broke upon the silence that followed this bad news. Then Maurice Malherb appeared, dismounted, kissed his wife and daughter, and nodded to the servant.

"All goes forward most prosperously," he said. "Since I promised the foreman ten pounds if the chimney-pots were on by Christmas, the place grows like honeycomb in June."

"Why, 'twas to be finished by then in any case, according to contract, my dear!"

"True; but you know what these people are."

"You be one as would pay for honesty an' make it marketable, 'Tis a wrong way, an' don't do the world no good," grumbled Kekewich.

"We must oil the wheels of progress, Kek," said his master. "I want to begin. I want to fight next winter up there."

"Best way to fight Dartmoor winters be to flee from 'em," answered the old man.

"Nay, nay—that's a coward's policy. I'm going to do things on Dartmoor that never have been done yet. I've not farmed here all these years for nothing."

"No, by Gor! you've not."

Annabel Malherb and Grace now turned homeward, and the farmer walked slowly beside Kekewich.

"Up aloft they make a great many mistakes. I mean the folk of the Moor. But to see error is to avoid it with a man of sense. And I've let the people find out already that they will have a powerful friend in me. I learn from them what to do, as well as what not to do. We shall want all kinds to help us. I believe in a big staff on a farm—especially a grazing farm. The old, the strong, the young—light work for the men that are three score and ten, and worn with a life of labour, though useful yet. And none shall have tail corn, as too often happens up there, for who can do man's work on pig's food? And my cider shall be cider, as it always has been—not the vinegar they call cider on Dartmoor."

"'Ess—you'll make the place a hospital for them past work—same as this be."

"Not I. But I'll keep self-respect in my people. The women shall have sixpence a day out of doors. The labourer is worthy of her hire."

"You'll never learn sense. You comed in the world to waste money, not to make it, as I've always told 'e. Sixpence a day for females! What next?"

"'Cast thy bread on the waters.' I'm a working Christian, and a lesson to you, heathen that you are."

"A working Christian ban't no better for being a fool. What's the sense of casting your bread 'pon the water while your wife an' maiden be hungry upon the shore?"

"Hungry! You're mad!"

"'Twill come to hunger. You'd spoil any market—a very good, open-hearted gentleman, us all knows; but sixpence a day for outdoor females! 'Tis all summed up in that. There ban't a outdoor woman in the world worth more'n fourpence."

"Ask their husbands. You're an old bachelor."

"'Ess—thank God!"

"Some sloes there are that even winter will never sweeten; and you are such a one. How fares the rheumatism?"

"A sleeping dog for the minute. He was gnawing his bone proper last week though. Maybe Dartymoor will lessen my pangs."

"I hope so with all my heart. 'Tis the least it can do for you, seeing how much you are going to do for it. Such men as you are greatly wanted there."

"Such men as me take blamed good care to bide down in the country—unless they've got reckless masters," said Kekewich.

Then he took Malherb's horse and departed, while anon the farmer discoursed very learnedly to his wife concerning Dartmoor. But his knowledge was borrowed; his enthusiasm was no substitute for personal experience. Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt loved the Moor like a mistress. To her faults he was blind; and he had now inspired his friend with kindred ardour.

"I long to begin looking for men, but 'tis too soon yet," Malherb declared. "In a few months, however, I shall have work for half a dozen."

"And a dairymaid, remember, since you design a complete change, and will not keep our Annie," said Mrs. Malherb.

"Yes, the women understand calves and cows wonderfully well up there. Such sheds as I am building—like the cloisters of a cathedral! But stock on Dartmoor in winter needs snug houses and generous treatment."

The women caught his mood, and prattled as though they already saw prosperity beckoning out of the future.

"After the war 'twill all go well, I pray," said Mrs. Malherb. "All human affairs languish just now; but when the war is ended and Noel comes home—— Peter Norcot, from the Woollen Factory at Chagford, was here in doleful dumps yesterday. The East Indian Company, who is their first customer——"

"Did you see him, Grace?" interrupted Maurice.

The girl blushed and shook her head, whereupon her father's face grew dark.

"For another year you shall have your way, Miss. Then—— I have said it. Then comes the pinch, and somebody will have to learn the duty of a child to its parent."

"I'll not marry with Peter—never," she said quietly. "He's no man—a mere walking, talking chatterbox—a packman, with nonsensical rags and tags of rhymes and jests for his stock-in-trade. He would drive me mad with his borrowed wit."

"We shall see," said Malherb. "His wit may be borrowed; his wealth is his own. Now go you and get a bottle of the Burgundy. We'll not argue—we love one another too dearly."

But though he spoke calmly, his mood changed, and the infernal temper that cursed his life, and lurked in his warm, big heart like a wasp in a rose, broke forth. He heard the dismal tale of the drowned pigs, dashed out of doors with his horsewhip, and roared for the lad Robert. When Grace returned with his wine, her father had disappeared; her mother, grown white and careworn suddenly, stood by the window.

Shrieks echoed through the autumn gloaming and rang against the walls of the farm; while, round a corner, the unfortunate youth whose errors were responsible for his master's loss lifted up a bitter voice and yelled for mercy under the lash.

"That'll teach you, you idle scoundrel! If you'd been drowned, none would have cared a curse. But my pigs—there, and there, and there; and never show your ugly face to me again, or I'll——"

Bob fled howling, and through a night of smart and sleeplessness wriggled in much misery. But only the present suffering of his back troubled him, for he knew what day would bring as surely as it brought the sun.

He met his master going the rounds before breakfast, and touched his hat and fell into a great simulated lameness; whereon Malherb gave him "Good morning" and threw him a shilling.

"Mind the pigs closer henceforth, you vagabond," he said; then added to himself as he saw the boy's rueful countenance, "and I will mind my temper closer, please God."

Kekewich appeared from a barn as the shilling was picked up.

"Ah," he said, when Bob had departed, "usual way. Even the misfortune of they pigs have cost 'e a coin more'n there was any call to pay."

CHAPTER IV
"THE MARROW OF THE FARM"

The grievance uttered by Lovey Lee against those who settled upon Dartmoor and appropriated to particular uses that ancient domain, was widespread a hundred years ago, and is alive to-day. Aforetime some five-and-thirty ancient Forest Tenements were held as customary freeholds, or copyholds, from the Manor of Lydford independent of the Duchy, and these venerable homesteads shall be found scattered in the most secluded and salubrious regions of the Moor. Of these, however, the Duchy has now secured more than half, and it will probably acquire the remainder in process of time. But a different sort of farm sprang up on every side a century since; "newtake" tenements appeared; and Maurice Malherb now proposed to create another such in the virgin valley of Fox Tor. These constant enclosures have been a source of discontent upon Dartmoor for many generations, and the peasants protest with reason, for theirs is the unalienable right to this great waste, and every acre fenced off against their sheep and cattle is a defiance of ancient charters and a robbery of the poor. The cry was old before Tudor times, and you shall read in Henry VI. (Part 2) how the Second Peter, representing his fellow-townsmen, petitions "against the Duke of Suffolk, for enclosing the commons of Melford."

And so it happened that Malherb's advent made him more enemies than friends in the border villages and among the scattered homesteads of the Moor.

A little knot of grumblers were met together at the "Saracen's Head," near Prince Town—a modest tavern long since superseded by the present famous hostelry at Two Bridges. This party now aired its wrongs, and albeit no man amongst them had ever set eyes upon Malherb, all spoke an evil word against him, and each man could report some sinister story gleaned from another. It appeared certain upon these rumours that the new "squatter" was a hard and rapacious rascal.

"The place will be finished home to the roof next year," said a thin, straight man with a long beard and a face so hidden in hair that little more than his nose and eyes protruded from it. "Fox Tor Farm 'twill be named, an' Lovey Lee, up to Siward's Cross, have said as she'll bewitch him from the day he enters the house."

"Somebody did ought to tell the Prince Regent," murmured a very old man who sat by the fire. "He don't know about these here goings on, an' how Duchy fills his pockets with gold stolen from our pockets. This place was given to us in the early ages of the earth, an' if the Prince knowed the rights of it, he wouldn't take the money."

"What be Duchy, Uncle Smallridge?" inquired a weak-eyed youth with flaxen hair and fluffy, corn-coloured down about his cheeks and chin. "For my part I can't grasp hold of it. Be it a live thing as you might say?"

The old man addressed as Uncle Smallridge laughed and spat into the fire.

"Duchy's alive enough; yet 'tis wasting wind to cuss it an' breath to talk against it. 'Tis alive, but it can't be hurled; it have ears, but it be deaf to the likes of us. It laughs at us, but we never hear the laughter."

"An' it's got a deep pocket," said the hairy man. "What say you, neighbour Woodman?"

"I say, 'tis a monster," answered another speaker. "'Tis the invention of the Devil to breed anger an' evil thoughts in us. Here be I, Harvey Woodman of Huccaby, son of Harvey Woodman of Huccaby, grandson of Harvey Woodman of Huccaby, great-grandson of Harvey Woodman of Huccaby; an' I tell you that the vexations of the Duchy have so lighted 'pon my family from generation to generation, that it has got in our blood an' we stand to it same as mankind in the Bible do stand to the seed of the serpent."

"Maybe—with a difference, Harvey," answered Uncle Smallridge. "Duchy'll bruise your head for you, an' your son's head, same as it did your forbears, but you won't bruise its heel; for why? It haven't got no heel to bruise."

"'Tis a wicked whole made up of decent bits," declared the hairy man, whose name was Richard Beer. "The gents as stand for Duchy, take 'em one by one, be human men same as us; but when they meets together, the Devil's in the chair every time. An' now another two hundred acres gone, an' all that butivul stroll for cattle beyond Fox Tor Mire walled off against my heifers an' yours."

"I hate the chap afore I see him. He've got a wicked-sounding name," said Thomas Putt, the youth with weak eyes.

"If we was men instead of mice, we'd rise up an' show Duchy that right's right, and that its ways be the ways of a knave," said Harvey Woodman. Then he shook his bull neck and drank deep.

"Supposing us all had your great courage, no doubt something would be done," answered Beer. "What you say be true; but we spend our indignation in words an' leave none for deeds."

"Where there's smoke there's fire," declared the ancient by the hearth. "If I was a younger man I'd lead you forth against Duchy an' be the fust to heave down they walls rising up-along—ay, an' call upon the God o' Justice to lend His A'mighty Hand."

"Which He wouldn't do; for there ban't no miracles now, Uncle Smallridge," said Thomas Putt.

"Ban't there? I think there be, else you'd be shut up, Tom, an' not roaming free."

This allusion made the company laugh, for, despite his slim shape and peering eyes, Tom Putt was a daring poacher—one of Izaac Walton's wicked but most skilful disciples. He killed many a salmon, and he shot many a partridge intended for a nobler destiny than slaughter at his hand.

A stranger entered the bar of the "Saracen's Head" at this moment. The man shook the wet from his coat, went to the fire, and ordered a glass of hot brandy and water.

"Nice plum weather still, your honour," said Uncle Smallridge, as he made his way from the blaze. "The sun have been drawing up the autumn rains these many days, but winter's here at last. The water will all come home again in snow."

"Wet enough," said the other. "I marvel your grass here doesn't rot in the ground."

"An' so it do in some places," answered Richard Beer; "as if it wasn't hard enough to get a living for the dumb things without walling the Moor off against the rightful owners. Come presently there won't be a bit of sweet grazing us can call our own. Now here's this Mr. Malherb—a foreigner from down Exeter way—bitten off a few more hundred acres of the best."

"Who says any ill of him?" asked the stranger.

"'Tis only hearsay," declared Woodman. "There may be good in him; but I wish he'd bided away."

"Lord knows I wouldn't speak no malice against the gentleman," continued Beer, "for I am going to ax him to give me work. He wants a few understanding chaps, 'tis said. An' I know the Moor better'n my Bible, more shame to me. You'll bear me out, neighbours, that I can get what man may from Dartymoor soil?"

"You'm very witty at it, us all knows," admitted Harvey Woodman.

"How would you tackle those wet slopes under Fox Tor?" asked the new-comer.

"Well," answered Beer, "drain, drain, drain an' graze, graze, graze; an' leave the natural herbage as much as you may. You won't better it."

The stranger laughed.

"If Maurice Malherb can't improve upon Nature on Dartmoor, 'tis pity," he declared.

But Richard Beer shook his head.

"You've got to follow in these parts, not lead. Nature do know her own business; an' you can't teach her, for her won't larn. Farming be a sort of coaxing her to your way o' thinking. There's two sorts o' stuff the place be made of: peaty moor, as'll yield good grass; an' swamp, as be useful to nought but a frog. This here Mr. Malherb must drain, an' pare, an' burn in reason; but he must not overdo it."

"Mind you, the natural things have their value," put in old Smallridge. "French furze at four years' growth do fetch a pound an acre. An' if the land be fatted properly the man might grow potatoes."

"Potatoes do eat up all afore you eat them," said Beer; "though the appleing of 'em do keep the earth sweet an' mellow. Then he'll follow with barley, not wheat."

"As to the chances of corn?" asked the stranger. His wet coat smoked and sent up a fire-lit steam in the darkening chamber.

"Corn's a ticklish business, master," replied Beer. "Yet 'tis to be done if you'll bring your soil to a husband-like tilth an' not spare lime. Burn clean, plough, an' dress as generously as your pocket will stand. Then spread fresh mould afore the seed earth. Earth must be fetched, for you've got to remember there's none there. Then sow your wheat—ten pecks to the acre—harrow in, strike out the furrows, and pray God for eighteen bushels to the acre. He can do it an' He's a minded. Next year the man must refresh his stubble, plough, sow, hack in, an' hope for ten or twelve bushels. Then turnips must follow—not broadcast like our fathers sowed 'em—for that's to spread a table for the fly, but the two-furrow way. Then the land must have three years' fallow; an' that's the whole law an' the prophets about it, so far as I know anything."

"In my youth," said Uncle Smallridge, "when the world was awful backward at farming, us growed nought but rye; an' a fool here an' there do still cling to his fathers' coat-tails an' go on growing it. But not one in the forefront of the day, like Dick Beer."

"All the same," concluded Mr. Beer, "the gentleman's best stand-by will be beasts, like the rest of us. It don't pay trying to tame Dartmoor—he'll soon find that out, despite all the talk of Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt an' such-like great men."

"And you want work?" asked the listener.

"So I do. I'm ready to try an' make a fortune for anybody."

"Why are you out of employment?"

"My last master have gived up," confessed the labourer.

"Did you make his fortune?"

"To be plain, he was very unlucky. I couldn't help him. Nobody couldn't. He was overlooked, I reckon. The evil eye was upon him."

"Ah!—Well, Maurice Malherb is not frightened of the evil eye. What wages do you get?"

"Nought to trumpet about. Seven shilling a week—'tis the usual wage, but pinching. My wife be good for two shilling. So us do very well—thanks to God, who didn't send no childer."

"I'll give you ten shillings a week."

"You! Who be you, master?'

"I am Maurice Malherb, of Fox Tor Farm. Work must begin in a month. I'm looking round me. My head man comes up presently. But he doesn't know Dartmoor. You appear to do so. Provided your credentials and character are good, I'll engage you on trial."

"Aw jimmery! this be great news. Ten shilling a week!"

"My workpeople will be the marrow of my farm. I know that very well."

"You'd do wise to take his wife along with him, your honour," said Uncle Smallridge. "Such a dairymaid ban't often met with. Fifteen cows she've been known to tackle with no more than help in the milking. That's three more'n any other woman I've ever heard about."

"'Tis true, your honour," declared Richard Beer; "though my own wife, 'tis true. There be some as would rob the hearse an' chase the driver—such be always crying out for help in their work; but my Dinah's different. A towser for work; an' her temper pretty near so sweet as the cream she makes."

"She shall come," answered Mr. Malherb. "My lady has the usual pin-money," he continued. "The poultry, pigs, and dairy produce accrue to her; and out of it she keeps the house, save in bread and green stuff. She will need a good dairymaid who can go to market."

"An' if there's any more men you want, Woodman here be a masterpiece at ploughing an' wall-building an' handling stone in general, ban't you, Harvey?" asked Mr. Beer, solicitous for his friend.

"Yes, I be," said Mr. Woodman. "Us was somebody in the land once, but now I've only got a little old cottage left at Huccaby, though in the past my people owned the farm there an' scores an' scores of acres. But us have gone down. I'll come if you want me; an' my son be a very handy lad. I live by cutting peat an' building walls an' such like; but 'tis a poor business, an' I'd gladly go over to you, master, if you'll give me a trial."

"An do, please your honour, find me a job," cried Thomas Putt. "I wouldn't be so bold an' 'dashus as to ax for a shilling a day; but, afore God, I'll do great deeds for ninepence!"

"An' what great deeds can you do?" asked Malherb. "You should go to a physician for your eyes."

"They be only pink-rimmed, your worship," explained the owner. "They'm diamonds for seeing with—'specially by night."

"Putt be a very good man if he's got a better to watch him, ban't you, Thomas?" asked Mr. Beer, and the poacher admitted it.

"'Tis so," he confessed frankly. "I can't stand to work if I know there ban't no eye upon me. 'Tis my nature."

"Not but what you've got your vartues," added Beer kindly. "An' come his honour wants a salmon, or a woodcock, or a fat hare, he can't do better than go to you for it."

Mr. Malherb enjoyed this subject.

"I'm a sportsman myself, my lads. I love every bit of sporting—gun, horse, hound, and rod. You shall have your chance, Tom; but no poaching, mind, or it's all up with you. Now I shall want but two more men and one more woman and my household will be complete."

As he spoke a figure crawled out from a corner. No word had he spoken either before or since Malherb's arrival, but now this singular man approached, pulled his hair, and addressed the new power. He looked almost a dwarf, but his head was of normal size, and his expression betokened character. The labourer had seen sixty years. He was quite bald and as wrinkled as an old russet apple. His costume differed much from that of the company, for it seemed that he was chiefly clad in the pelts of vermin. A martin's skin furnished his cap, and at its side glimmered the sky-blue wing-feathers of a jay; his coat was green corduroy, but his waistcoat was made of moleskins, and he had a white one on each side for the pocket-lappet.

"I be Leaman Cloberry, coney-catcher an' mole-catcher," he said. "No man can teel a trap like me."

"I shan't want a coney-catcher," declared Malherb.

"Not regular, not regular; but off an' on, when the varmints get too free. There's other things, too. There's grays—or badgers, as you'd call 'em; there's pole-cats, an' martin-cats, an' hawks, an' owls, not to name foxes."

"Foxes?" said Malherb, frowning.

"Plenty of 'em; an' I gets six-an'-eightpence for a fox. You'll always find 'em hanging up on the yew tree in the churchyard, so that all the parish on its way to worship 'pon Sundays may see I earn my money."

"Kill foxes?"

"All varmints, your honour—from a hoop[*] to a hedge-pig."

[*] Hoop: A bullfinch.

"The man who kills foxes will never earn a shilling from me," thundered Malherb. "Out of my sight, you old miscreant! Kill foxes! What is Tyrwhitt about? I'd hang you to the church yew yourself if I had my way. Honest foxes to be killed by a clown!"

Leaman Cloberry regarded the angry settler without flinching.

"If you're that sort, your people be likely to have uneasy dreams," he said. "As to foxes, there'll be plenty for you an' the likes of you to run after on horseback—no need to fear that. I've killed but ten dogs an' two vixens in cub this year. I lay you'll meet more foxes around your hen-roosts up-along than you'll find time to hunt. Then you'll be sorry you growed so fiery against me."

"Get you gone, you mouldy rascal! Go to your vermin and foul the air no more."

The mole-catcher smiled and put on his hat.

"I'll go," he said, "since you be too great a man to breathe alongside of me. Good evening to your honour; an' my duty to you."

Then he made his exit, singing:

"A ha'penny for a rook;
A penny for a jay;
A noble for a fox;
An' twelvepence for a gray!"

It was the tariff of his trade, and he sang the words aloud at all seasons and in all company.

Nobody spoke after Malherb's explosion; but a moment afterwards he grew calm again, finished his liquor, and prepared to depart.

"Come with your papers on Monday week to Tor Royal. And now drink success to Fox Tor Farm, and when next you hear of Maurice Malherb, remember that the devil is not so black as he is painted."

He flung half a crown upon the counter and went his way, while the men in eager concert cried, "So us will, your honour!" "Long life an' fortune to your honour!" and "Good luck to Fox Tor Farm!"

When Malherb was gone they discussed the matter, and no emotion but a very active interest marked their attitude.

"Dartymoor'll soon larn him not to fling half-crowns about," said Uncle Smallridge.

"Ten shilling a week!" mused Richard Beer. "He must be made of money."

"More likely soft in his head," answered a woman behind the bar.

CHAPTER V
DAWN

With the following spring Fox Tor Farm was habitable, and Mrs. Malherb and her daughter prepared to enter their new home. They had spent the winter in Exeter, for the old farm by Exe passed into other hands at Christmas, but Mr. Malherb himself already lived upon the Moor. In February he had gone into residence with Kekewich, and though the place was still but partially completed, his labourers also began work upon the scene and made shift to dwell there. Good apartments for the people were now finished, and Mr. Malherb's cattle had also arrived to fill the fine yard and comfortable byres erected for their winter uses. Kekewich cried failure from the first, but none laboured more zealously to avert it, none toiled early and late with more strenuous diligence than he.

True to his whim, the master denied Annabel Malherb and Grace one sight of Fox Tor Farm until they actually arrived to dwell there; and even then he so ordered their advent that it fell in darkness. At ten o'clock upon a night in mid-April, mother and daughter passed over the nocturnal Moor, vaguely felt its surrounding immensity, and turned from the unknown earth, where it rolled formless and vast around them, to the familiar moon, whose face they knew.

From Holne, a border village whither they had driven by stage, Mrs. Malherb and her daughter now rode on pillions; while behind them came the tinkle of little bells and the thud of heavy hoofs where six pack-horses followed. Annabel sat behind her husband; while Grace had Harvey Woodman for her escort. Through the silent darkness they passed, and the mother listened to Malherb's hopes, and sometimes kissed the round ear next her while she echoed his sanguine mind. But Grace paid little heed to Woodman, who discoursed without tact upon the complicated miseries of a Dartmoor life, and explained how that his father, grandfather, great-grandfather, had all gone steadily downhill before the insidious Duchy.

A granite cross at length loomed up against the sky on a lofty ridge, and its significance here uplifted upon the confines of her new life sent a throb to Mrs. Malherb's heart.

"This be Ter Hill," said Harvey Woodman to Grace; "an' thicky cross be one of many set up around about by God-fearing men some time since Adam. Now, if you'll look down into the valley, you'll see a light like a Jack o' Lantern. That's your home, Miss."

With mingled feelings the women gazed, where square and ruddy spots, sunk deep in the silver night, outlined the windows of the farm and welcomed them. The pack-horses, with heavily-laden crooks upon their backs, arrived. Then Malherb led the way, and his cavalcade went slowly down the hill.

Only one face from the past welcomed Mrs. Malherb and Grace, where Kekewich stood and lighted them up the steps to the front door. Supper awaited the party; then, aweary, and with the emotions of a stranger in a strange land, the girl retired to her little chamber facing west, and her mother sought the company of Dinah Beer and Mrs. Woodman. She found them amiable, courteous, and kindly. Their outlook upon life was not sanguine, yet a warmth of heart marked them, and the sternness of their days had left no special impress upon their simple natures. Sympathy brightened their eyes—a sentiment that astonished the new mistress, for she had not often met with it from her inferiors. Yet these women appreciated the fact that she was faced with new problems and new difficulties. They had also seen something of Mr. Malherb and learned to appraise his qualities.

"You'll come to it, ma'am," said Dinah Beer, "same as your butivul cows did. They was worritted cruel at first. That gert red 'un, with a white star on her forehead—'Marybud' by name—why, I could a'most swear that her shed tears when first she got here; but now she an' the rest have settled to the Moor an' larned the ways of it like Christians."

"An' master be to the manner born," declared Mary Woodman. "My man says he never seed a gentleman gather knowledge so quick. Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt from Tor Royal was over here last week, an' he said us had all done wonders."

The wife readily gathered up this comfort, and presently, ere she entered into sleep, a gentle satisfaction crowned her spirit, and her thoughts were a prayer, half thankfulness, half petition.

Her daughter, too, from gloom arose into a healthy cheerfulness. She set about ordering her treasures to her liking, and did not retire until midnight. Then, where a sinking moon touched the river mists with light, she gazed, plucked happiness from that wonderful spectacle, and so slept contented and trustful of her destiny.

Early in the morning, hungering for the first glimpse of this new world, Grace hastened to her window and looked out upon Dartmoor. A lark, invisible in the blue above, found her heart in that dawn hour. The day was glorious, and the bird music dimmed her eyes, so that the girl had to blink a little before she could see the outspread world. Beneath her the farm threw its shadow upon reclaimed heath and ploughed land. New grey walls extended round about, and raw pinewood gates marked the enclosures. Beyond stretched out the cup of the mire, and sere rushes still spread a pallor upon it, where ridge after ridge of peat ranged away until detail vanished in the prevailing monochrome. Red sunrise fires touched this waste into genial colour, and threads of gold flashed through its texture where streamlets ran. Majestic size and fundamental simplicity marked the materials of the sunrise pageant. The Swincombe River sang on her way to Dart; Fox Tor's turrets, touched with rose, ascended southward, and beyond, looming darkly against the south, appeared the bosom of Cater's Beam. A spire of blue smoke, miles away in the brown distance, marked Lovey Lee's hut, while northerly rose infant plantations at Tor Royal, and the spring light of larches made a home upon the hill, and spoke of human enterprise.

Grace drank the crystal air and listened to the lark. Then another sight arrested her, and she noted, upon a little mound at the edge of the river, a cross above three broad, shallow steps. It stood upon a square pedestal which had been bevelled by chamfering around the socket, and Grace knew that she saw the historic cenotaph of Childe the Hunter.

The lark, the river, the cross, all spoke their proper message, and kind chance had willed that this first day of the new life should be lovely, heralded by sunshine, unfolded beneath blue skies. Grace Malherb's young spirit swam out through the golden gates of the morning, and she praised her God in wordless thoughts. A leaden day, haunted by low and crawling mists, a welcome of dripping rain, and the plover's melancholy mew, had awakened other emotions; but instead was this embodiment of triumphant spring—a dawn of cloudless glory and the lark's uplifted joy.

Half an hour later Grace was watching Mrs. Beer milk "Marybud." Dinah—a brown-faced woman with neat wrists and ankles, grey eyes, and a face still pretty—looked up from under her sunbonnet, where her cheek was pressed against the cow, and saw a tall, rather thin maiden who had just stopped growing. With loving hand Nature had completed her girl's five feet eight inches, and now she was about to turn the child into a fair woman. This the dairymaid readily perceived.

"Us must keep the best of the cream for 'e, Miss," she said. "You wants for they pretty hands to be plumper, an' your cheeks too."

"How kind to think of such a thing! I can return the compliment, Mrs. Beer."

"Nay; I've had my plump time. I be near five-an'-forty. Yet I was round once, an' so milky as a young filbert nut. Now I be in the middle season, when us does our hard work. But you—I seem Dartymoor will soon bring colour to your cheeks, though it couldn't make they eyes no brighter. Here, take an' drink, will 'e? I love to see young things drinking milk. Milk be the very starting-place of life, come to think of it. I never had no babies, worse luck, though I always felt a gert softness for 'em."

"But I'm not a baby, Mrs. Beer; I'm nearly seventeen!"

Grace laughed and drank. The lustre of her red lips dulled through the milky film. She gasped after her drink, and Dinah saw her small white teeth.

"You'm a bowerly maiden," she said, with extreme frankness. "So lovely as the bud o' the briar in June; an' Dartymoor will make a queen of 'e afore long. Fresh air, an' sweet water, an' miles of heather to ride over. Your eyes be old friends to me, miss—the brown of the leaves in autumn—just like my dead sister's."

"I have my father's eyes," said Grace; but Dinah questioned it.

"His be darker far. There ban't no storm in yours—they don't flash lightning. An', please God, they'll have no cause to rain either. Wealth's a wonderful thing, though what's best worth money ban't purchasable all the same."

Richard Beer had arrived and heard his wife's platitude.

"Money's a power 'pon Dartymoor, however," he said, "an' I'm glad the master 'pears to be made of it, if I may say so without offence, Miss."

"Not at all," declared Grace. "Father isn't made of money, and you mustn't think so. He looks for a return very soon for all his outlay."

Beer touched his hat with great respect before answering.

"As to that, mustn't count on no miracles, Miss Malherb. The master be larning that a'ready. Us can't go no quicker'n Nature's own gait. She won't be pushed because a chap here an' there goes bankrupt. 'Tis only at love-making she works so fast, not at farm-making."

"Her ways do often look slow to a man in a hurry," said Dinah.

"But us have got to wait for 'em to work, all the same," concluded Beer, "an' all the cusses of David never made one blade o' grass sprout so quick as a drop of warm rain."

This apparent allusion to her father's forcible modes of speech saddened Grace.

"'Tis very true," she answered, then turned to the house and went in to breakfast.

CHAPTER VI
MR. PETER NORCOT

Three months after the arrival of Maurice Malherb's family at Fox Tor Farm, a visitor appeared to spend some days with them. Mr. Peter Norcot set out from his home at Chagford and rode across the Moor on a fine morning in July; while before him at dawn a pack-horse with his luggage had started upon the same journey. Leaving certain final directions at the great factory by Teign River, in which he was a partner, the wool-stapler ascended from his home to Dartmoor, climbed a broad common or two, and in little more than an hour after noon he trotted southward over the mighty crest of Hameldon.

Norcot was a handsome, fair man of five-and-thirty. The only ugly feature of his face appeared in an exaggerated chin. For the rest, his countenance showed strength and abundant determination. Any special distinction was lacking from it. He exhibited a breezy and amiable exterior to the world, loved a jest and doted upon an epigram. Frank honesty marked his utterances, and his outlook upon life was generous. He had no enemies, and enjoyed considerable wealth, for despite the wars, his business prospered, and his grievances in connection with it were more apparent than real. A humorous and hearty manner concealed some traits of Peter's character, for tremendous tenacity of purpose hid itself beneath superficial lightness of demeanour. He had a great gift of constancy that rose superior to side issues. His first object in life was to marry Grace Malherb, and now he strove to win his way by careful study of the girl and by every delicate art that he knew. Her father was upon his side, and the end seemed assured; but Peter desired that Grace should come to him of her own free will.

Now misfortune unexpected overtook the lover, for out of fiery sunshine crept a sudden mist, and soon the clouds grew dense and the day changed. The fog in streaks and patches swept down with heavy and increasing density, until man and horse were brushed with its cold fingers. The light waned as evening approached, and the mist thickened steadily into fine dense rain. Norcot's hair dripped, his eyebrows were frosted, and he felt the cold drops running from his hat under his collar. The unexpected change of weather caused him no irritation, for the man was never known to lose his temper, and that fact, in a tempestuous and ill-educated age, won for him wide measure of respect.

Now he murmured scraps from various sacred and profane authors and addressed them aloud to his horse.

"We must keep the weather on our right cheek, nag. Tut, tut! How vast this silence and gloom! It helps us to know our place in nature, albeit we have lost our place in it. Lost, and found by being lost! Ha, ha!

"'Come, man,
Hyperbolized Nothing! know thy span,
Take thine own measure here: down, down and bow
Before thyself in thine Idea, thou
Huge emptiness!

"Crashaw, I thank thee. And I pray that thou wilt help me with Lady Grace. 'All daring dust and ashes,' indeed, to hope in that quarter; but time is on my side. She must yield—eh, Victor?"

The horse pricked his ears at sound of his name and splashed on, leaving a trail behind him where he had brushed the moisture from heath and grass. By Norcot's calculations he should now have been nearing the valley of West Dart, and from thence he hoped to hit the mouth of the Swincombe River, and so reach his destination; but time passed; the faint wind blew now on one cheek, now upon the other, and at length Mr. Norcot realised that he was quite hopelessly lost. The darkness crowded in upon him and elbowed him; not one whisper penetrated it. He pulled up, drank a dram from a little silver spirit flask, and listened for the murmur of running water. But another sound suddenly rewarded him. A shadow flitted across the gloom, and a thin, old voice was heard lifted up in song.

"A ha'penny for a rook;
A penny for a jay;
A noble for a fox;
An' twelvepence for a gray!'"

"Well met, neighbour!" shouted Norcot. "And since you sing, I doubt not you are happy; and since you are happy, you have a home and know the way to it."

"'Ess fay! An' you too, sir. I be Leaman Cloberry, coney-catcher of Dartmeet. An' who be you?"

"One Peter Norcot, from Chagford. This is not my country, and I'm seeking the River Swincombe—have been doing so for many hours in vain. Now 'Light thickens; and the crow Makes wing to the rooky wood.' But where's the river?"

"You be within half a mile of it, your honour."

"Then I came straighter than I knew. That's the reward for always going straight, Mr. Cloberry; when darkness overtakes us, we go straight still. It has become a habit. I want the new farm of Mr. Malherb beneath Cater's Beam. And you shall show me the way thereto."

Leaman Cloberry shifted a small bag that he carried on his shoulder. He was bound in the same direction; but while Norcot might be supposed a friend to Fox Tor Farm, Cloberry crept thither with intentions the reverse of friendly. He had chosen the fog for a dark purpose. Now, however, he hid his designs and spoke.

"I know the place and a good few of the men as works there."

"How do they prosper? Malherb and Dartmoor must be flint and steel. Yet the man will prove tougher than the granite, I hope."

Cloberry stroked a red mark on his cheek.

"Did you hear tell what chanced to Holne Church a week ago?" he asked.

"No, I did not."

"My gentleman from Fox Tor Farm took his ladies there to worship. An' I comed along same time with a vixen fox an' two cubs to hang 'em up in the sight of the nation, so as all men might see I'd earned my money. An' he falled on me like a cat-a-mountain, an' used awfulest language ever let fly in a burying-ground, an' hit me across the face with his whip."

"I'm heartily sorry and ashamed to hear it. Under a sacred fane, too! I grieve for this. It is a lesson to us all. Yet to kill foxes! Tut, tut! 'Volpone, by blood and rank' a gentleman.' I preserve game myself, yet pay tithe unquestioning to reynard."

"'Twas assault and battery, whether or no. An' Squire he took Malherb's part, an' parson was o' my side. An' I said as folks must live, an' Malherb, in his lofty way, sees the force of that, an' flings me half a sovereign. But I let it bide on the ground. You can't batter a man like that on a Sunday morning for money. I'm set against him, and I'll set other folk against him too."

"Think better of it. Half a sovereign is a very convenient embodiment of ten shillings. Take this one for showing me my way. 'I would be friends with you and have your love.' It is my rule of life."

Cloberry accepted the coin thus offered, declared that Peter was a hero, and presently put him upon his road to Fox Tor. But after Mr. Norcot had trotted out of sight, his guide followed in the same direction. The old man skulked under a wall until darkness had fallen upon the moor; then, walking out boldly into a fine piece of meadow-land upon which Maurice Malherb especially prized himself, he opened his sack and took therefrom a box with a pierced top. Gentle squeaking came from inside this receptacle; and now, opening it, Cloberry released a dozen fat and lively moles.

"There, my little velvet-coats!" he said; "go to work an' tear the heart out of him when he sees what you can do. Increase an' multiply, my dears, like the children of Israel; an' presently I'll bring up a dozen more to help 'e!"

The moles crawled about uneasily, but presently began to dig and sink into the earth. The fog had lifted, and the lights of Fox Tor Farm now shone across the night. Leaman Cloberry shook his fist at them.

"That's a beginning," he growled. "An' I'll bring rats for your byres an' stoats for your hen-roosts. I'll plague you; I'll fret your gizzard! An' I wish that I was Moses, for then I'd fetch along all the plagues of Egypt against 'e an' break your stone heart!"

Meanwhile, as the vermin-catcher tramped homeward, and presently so far recovered good temper as to sing his only song, Peter Norcot found a welcome and much sympathy. Malherb now regarded himself as an old Dartmoor man, familiar with every possible freak and manifestation of Nature upon the waste. He explained to Norcot the course proper to be pursued in a fog, and Peter, whose knowledge of the Moor extended from boyhood, listened very gravely, acknowledged his errors, and praised the older man's shrewdness in the matter.

Before dinner Mr. Malherb, in all the splendour of fine black, new pumps, and a frilled shirt-front with a diamond in it, went off to his cellar for those remarkable wines that he assured familiar guests were now no longer in the market; while the lover enjoyed some precious moments with his lady. Grace looked fair to see in her white muslin and blue ribbons. She wore the high waist of the period; her hair towered in a mass on the top of her head, yet little prim curls hung like flowers on either side; white shoes cased her feet, and the elastic of them made a cross between her ankles.

"The Moor suits you nobly, dear Grace," said Mr. Norcot, who was himself resplendent. "I never saw you lovelier."

"Do leave all that," she said. "Let us meet in peace."

"So be it," he answered, and continued—

"'Gracie, I swear by all I ever swore,
That from this hour I shall not love thee more,—
What! love no more? Oh! why this altered vow?
Because I cannot love thee more than now!'"

A gentle look came into his blue eyes as he gazed upon her. It was not natural to them, but he had practised it often before the looking-glass, and could assume it at pleasure.

"Still occupied with other men's jests, Peter. If you only understood me! Do you know why I love Dartmoor? Because it leaves me alone. Because it cares no more for me than for the ant that crawls on the grass-blade. So big, so grand, so stern it is. And it always tells the truth."

"You are quite wrong. The Moor loves with a hopeless passion. It has kissed you. I see the print of its kisses on your cheek. It has kissed your little elbow, for I note a dimple there that is new to me."

Grace frowned and pulled up her mitten. She sat upon the music-stool, struck a note or two, and did not answer. Peter sighed.

"You are cold, you are cold," he said. "What does Wycherley remark? 'Out of Nature's hands they came plain, open, silly, and fit for slaves, as she and heaven intended 'em; but damned Love——' There it is! 'Blessed Love,' if you happened to love me; doubly, trebly 'damned Love,' since your heart is set on somebody else."

"Not at all. I love nobody. I hate the word."

"And you are seventeen to-morrow!"

"'On that auspicious day began the race
Of every virtue joined in one sweet Grace.'"

"What is my birthday to you, Peter?"

"You can ask that! I must answer in an epigram. There is only one reply possible. Martial—but I know a beautiful translation:—

"'Believing hear what you deserve to hear:
Your birthday as my own to me is dear;
But yours gives most; for mine did only lend
Me to the world; yours gave to me a friend.'

Only that word 'friend' is too weak."

"I wish you would be content with friendship, and not fret me to death with all this nonsense. Do you know that father has bought me a lovely hunter for a birthday gift?"

"I do. And that horse will want a whip—until he knows your voice; and that whip Peter Norcot has provided. 'Tis almost worthy of you—a pretty toy."

"I don't want your whip," she said.

Mr. Norcot cast about for something from The Taming of the Shrew; but he changed his mind. Meantime Grace spoke again.

"I shall be sorry to give up riding my poor little 'Russet.' Still, he's not up to my weight now; and he's growing elderly and lazy, and I'm to hunt next season. Won't it be lovely?"

"Our Dartmoor blades will hunt no more foxes; they'll hunt for smiles from you," said Peter gloomily.

"You shall have some good long gallops with me if you will. I'm mastering the country well, and now with 'CÆsar'—that's my new horse—I shall be able to go twice as far as formerly."

"I rejoice. You must take me upon your favourite rides."

"One has a horrid fascination for me. 'Tis to the top of North Hisworthy Tor above Prince Town. From there you can look straight down into that great War Prison—the saddest sight for any woman's eyes."

Mr. Malherb entered at this moment.

"A tender fool," he said, "and her mother no better. Eight thousand French tigers behind those bars; and these women in their silly way would set 'em loose to-morrow."

"They long for their dens and their cubs, poor fellows," said Grace.

"They fought for their country—that's their only sin," murmured Annabel Malherb.

"They fought against England—that's their sin," retorted her husband hotly. "The lying, slippery rascals! Dartmoor's too good for 'em. Honour! Three broke parole at Ashburton last week!"

"Isn't it wonderful? They play games and hold concerts and have play-acting!" said Grace.

"Their vile French levity," answered her father. "Instead of being on their knees asking God to forgive 'em, they dance and sing."

Mr. Norcot shook his head, as though to imply he echoed Malherb's sentiments. Then he asked a question, but did not guess the storm it would awaken.

"And what about the American prisoners?"

"Curse 'em!" roared the farmer, like a sudden explosion of thunder. "Curse 'em living and dying, and, if I had my way, I'd hang the foul traitors—every man. Our own flesh and blood—a British Colony——"

"I'm afraid 'tis idle to dream that any more. The tea business. Never was such a shattering storm bred in a teacup before," answered Norcot. "A bad day for England——"

"Matricides, murderers, insolent democratical scoundrels!" cried the other. "My blood boils at the name. How is it that the Almighty has not sunk their stolen continent fathoms deep in the sea to cleanse it? Why are they allowed to live? Pirates—slave-driving, slave-hunting, slave-breeding pirates, and lynchers, and blackguards—self-constituted a Nation. A Nation! They make you believe in Hell against your will."

"They have more pluck and originality than the French, I am told," said Peter calmly. "They escape in a wonderful manner; they give the guards ceaseless trouble and anxiety."

"For why? They're bastard English. They've got our blood in their veins. 'Twill take a few generations yet ere it all runs into the sink and leaves nothing but mongrel. A poisoned race—a fallen race. Pride has ruined 'em; as it ruined the Devil, their dam. Hanging, drawing, quartering, I say! No honest man——"

"Come to dinner, Maurice," said Mrs. Malherb. "And don't thus rage before eating. 'Tis very bad for you. They are at least out of mischief now, poor creatures."

"Never," answered her husband. "An American is never out of mischief until he is dead."

"The prison should be a good, handy market for farm produce," ventured Peter.

"It is; but I'd rather starve than touch their vile money," said Malherb.

He gave his arm to his daughter and went to the dining-room, while Mr. Norcot and Mrs. Malherb followed them.

Kekewich always waited upon the family, and not seldom he was addressed during the course of a meal concerning subjects within his wide knowledge. Now the talk turned to trade, and Norcot explained a serious problem of his own business.

"Everything is depressed in these fighting times," he said. "One looks for that and provides for it. But what shall be thought of our principal customers, the East India Company? Wool don't get cheaper, that's very certain, but they are sending down the price of long ells half-a-crown a piece. They say that our woollens are often a drug in the Indian market; and now to remedy the thin web, every piece of long ell in stripes shall weigh twelve pounds. We work web at coarser pitch to meet this want, and, of course, defeat the object of the demand by producing rubbish."

The conversation became profoundly technical, and Malherb, who deemed himself an expert upon wool, as upon most other subjects, uttered great words. Then Kekewich, himself an old wool-comber, became so interested that he forgot his business. At last he could stand it no more, but set down a dish violently and plunged into conversation, much to Norcot's entertainment. He perceived, however, that Kekewich knew far more about the matter than Mr. Malherb, and when the servant was from the room made a jest upon him.

"A wonderful man, and sane too. Sound sense—every word of it.

"'Old Kek doth with his lantern jaws
Throw light upon the woollen laws.'"

"And upon most other matters," declared Grace. "And his thoughts are all his own—borrowed from nobody."

"It happens to me," confessed Peter, "that the things I think have always been better worded by others. With becoming modesty, therefore, I borrow."

According to modern ideas of courtesy, Mrs. Malherb and her daughter were somewhat slighted during the progress of dinner; but women listened more and talked less a hundred years ago than now. Annabel saw that Peter's plate and glass were kept full, chatted with her daughter, laughed at her husband's jests, and departed to the drawing-room as soon as the table was cleared. Then Kekewich deposited two silver candlesticks and a pair of silver snuffers within reach of his master, produced a dish of dry walnuts, and tenderly stationed a bottle of port at the elbow of each gentleman.

"I know you're only a one-bottle man, and you are wise at your age," said Malherb. "Indeed, I seldom do more myself, save on rare occasions, and never except during the hunting season."

"I hope you'll account for two bottles upon the day I marry Mistress Grace," answered Peter. "She grows an angel. Never beamed such radiant beauty.

"'Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
Having some business, do intreat her eyes
To twinkle in their spheres till they return.'

But I wish they would twinkle for me."

"To-morrow she is seventeen—God bless her! They are my heart and my soul—she and my son. But she's yours, Norcot, for I've said it. She shall reign over your place at Chagford. Her welfare is my first care in this world. Now leave that. Let our talk be about sheep. I have discovered that Dartmoor is the best sheep-walk in the kingdom. We shall have such wool for you next year as will make you generous against your will. Already I'm treating for certain three-year-old Dartmoor wethers that'll shear nine pounds of unwashed wool a fleece. Think of it! Take one shilling and threepence a pound and five hundred sheep—the result is nearly three hundred pounds of money in one year! Then I design to cross with the new Leicesters. Frankly, I see a large fortune within ten years. It can hardly be avoided."

Mr. Norcot nodded thoughtfully. He knew the farmer's figures were absurdly high, both in wool and money.

"You look so far ahead. I always envy you that gift of foresight. Yet, in sober honesty, you must not count to get more than a shilling a pound. If you could breed Merinos now."

"I've thought of that, too."

"Ah! I'll wager you have," said the merchant, with admiration. "What don't you think of, Mr. Malherb? 'Tis good to know that another man of ideas has come on Dartmoor."

So the talk and the wine sped, and presently they joined the ladies. Annabel was at the piano, and Grace sat beside a peat fire, engaged with her needle. While the music ran, Peter, inspired by dinner and the fair maiden under his eyes, pulled forth a notebook and adventured an original rhyme. He was hurt at the girl's recent allusion, and now determined to reveal powers unsuspected. But the gem he designed would not polish, and Grace herself went to the piano to sing an exceedingly doleful ballad before Mr. Norcot's effort was complete. Then he handed it to her in a book, while Mrs. Malherb spoke aside to Dinah Beer, and the master, who cared little for music, perused an agricultural survey of Devon.

Miss Malherb read, and her lip curled visibly.

"Sweet vestal Gracie's lovely eyes have lighted
Such fires within his breast that Peter's frighted;
For now, behold! This man of noble mettle
Doth feel his heart boil over like a kettle."

Annabel still talked with her woman, and Grace, after brief cogitation, wrote a few lines under Mr. Norcot's effort, and handed it back again. He saw what she had said, and smiled—

"Though water boils apace and fire be bold,
Pour one on t'other, quickly both grow cold.
Therefore, good Peter, let thy heart boil over.
'Twill ease thee of thy pain; me of my lover."

He tore a scrap from the bottom of the sheet, and concluded the correspondence.

When Grace bade her father and his guest farewell and reached her room, she scanned Mr. Norcot's final comment, and found that it needed no reply. He had merely written—

"The epigrammatist rejoices; but the man weeps."

CHAPTER VII
THE WAR PRISON

On the morning of her seventeenth birthday, Grace rode forth upon the new hunter, and tenderly touched 'CÆsar's' flank with a whip of dainty workmanship. Peter, on his black horse, accompanied her, and Mr. Malherb stood at the door of Fox Tor Farm and watched them depart.

"A fine couple," he said to his wife. "One sees that Grace has got my skill in horsemanship now that she is properly mounted."

"And he rides well, too."

"So, so. Better than most young men. She's coming to my way of thinking. She laughs with him now and exchanges jests."

His wife shook her head.

"I misdoubt her. She's a Malherb—a jog-trot tradesman will never win her."

"Have done with such nonsense!" he said sharply. "He is no more a tradesman than am I. You should have better feeling than to use the word."

"She won't marry him, nevertheless," said Mrs. Malherb placidly.

"Will she not? If I am her father she will."

He turned and departed, while his wife, with a cloud upon her countenance, watched Mr. Norcot and Grace climb the steep side of Fox Tor and proceed to the heights above it.

Soon afterwards, as they turned their horses' heads toward Prince Town, Peter observed a strange, tall figure proceeding on foot in the same direction. It was as though one of the moorland crosses from the Abbot's Way had come to life and stole over the wilderness upon some superhuman errand.

"Look!" cried Norcot, "a walking scarecrow!"

Grace recognised the being, and laughed.

"A 'scarecrow,' you say. That's the richest woman on Dartmoor!"

"A woman—and a wealthy one? Impossible!"

"'Tis Lovey Lee, an old servant of my grandfather's. By chance she lives here within a few miles of Fox Tor Farm. We shall pass her hovel presently."

"Was it not she whom your father accused of stealing the amphora when Sir Nicholas died?"

"Yes; and he still vows that she has it, for all her oaths to the contrary. She's a weird old woman. Her grandson, John, tells me that she lives upon frogs and herb tea."

They were now abreast of the dame, and Peter inspected her carefully.

"Tut, tut! She does not throw away money upon her apparel," he said.

"No—isn't it horrid? I think she wears old sacks chiefly."

"And reduces them to the minimum. Her naked feet must be made of iron."

"Good morning, Lovey," said Grace. "Have you been to Holne? No; I see that you haven't, for you carry no basket."

"Mornin', maiden; an' to you, my gentleman," she answered very civilly. "No more Holne for me. I've got a better market for my poor goods now; an' nearer."

"The War Prison?"

"Ess fay! Plenty of money there for them that have anything to sell. I can scrape a few pence out of they Americans every week; though how I keep body an' soul together is my daily wonder."

"You would do it easier if you wore more petticoats, granny," said Peter.

"Petticoats!" she answered. "'Tis very well for the likes of you, bursting wi' fatness under your fine linen, to talk o' petticoats. Give me a crown an' I'll buy one—since you'm so anxious about it."

"Why, you're the richest woman on the Moor, Lovey," said Grace. "You know perfectly well that you have a gold mine hidden away somewhere."

The old woman showed her teeth and growled like a dog.

"Don't you tell that trash, or you'll make me your enemy I promise you! A gold mine—some 'crock o' gold' hid at a rainbow's foot or in a dead man's grave—like the fools tell about up here. I wish I knowed where. Do a woman salt down reptiles and make her meal of blind-worms and berries if she have got a gold mine hidden?"

"That's just what father says you would do," answered Grace.

"Tell Malherb to mind his business," she answered sourly, "or 'twill be the worse for him. 'Twill take him all his time to find a gold mine under Fox Tor, anyway, let alone the Lord's hand being against him for stealing the earth from the meek, as was meant to inherit it."

"Nothing of the sort," answered Grace, with great indignation. "She's a horrid old story-teller, Peter."

But Norcot never quarrelled with man or mouse.

"Mrs. Lee is naturally against the Duchy," he said. "The Duchy we all know. But, on the other hand, nobody alive can blame your father for availing himself of its propensities."

"He'll curse himself for a fool yet, however," said the old woman.

"I shall not be friendly with you any more, Lovey Lee," answered Grace frankly. "You're greedier than the Duchy, and you don't tell the truth. You wouldn't be so unpleasant if your conscience didn't hurt you. Henceforth I shall think with my father that you took the amphora."

"You may think what you please. It won't prove nothing but that you've got a Malherb habit of mind and be your faither's daughter."

"Come, Peter!" cried Grace. "I'll hear no more."

She trotted away, and, having dropped a coin behind him, Mr. Norcot followed. It was his sagacious custom never to lose any opportunity of making a friend. He had found possibilities of usefulness in the humblest road-mender; and this woman, with her evident strength and ferocity, attracted him. He perceived that she was one who would do anything within her power for payment.

Lovey picked up the money with a loud blessing on the giver. Then she watched the retreating figures.

"They be coming courting a'ready," she thought, "an' her only a half-growed giglet yet. Well, let the sky fall an' the sun burn blue, a crown be still a crown."

Before the old woman had reached home, Grace and Peter Norcot passed her cabin, and the wool-stapler showed more interest before Lovey's grim abode than at the more striking object close at hand. Siward's Cross was dismissed with a nod, but Mrs. Lee's lair awakened a lively attention.

"There she lives with only a wall of piled peat between her and her cows and donkey. She's got a grandson—a very handsome, courteous young fellow—and he dwells in that stable there. In her kitchen you would find stones for chairs."

"And stones for bread by the look of it. A cheerful soul. I wonder where her hiding-place may be? Did you see her glittering eyes—like two diamonds set in yellow ivory—and the fingers all crooked like a hawk's claws. She's a miser, or I never met one. And yet 'God but little asks where little's given.' Perhaps we wrong her."

"Father never wrongs anybody," answered Grace. "He storms, indeed, and will have his way; but good men always like him, and understand his noble qualities."

"Most true—one in a thousand. I'm thankful beyond measure that he is pleased to think well of me; for he'd never bestow his friendship on an unworthy object."

"One word for father; two for Peter Norcot."

"It is so; I rise above false modesty. If a good man praises me, it is my best advertisement before the world."

"You have a wonderful way with father."

"I was looking into John Guillim's book a day or two since. He is an old-time Pursuivant at Arms. Upon your family name and the three nettle leaves, which you'll see cut in the amethyst at the handle of your riding-whip, you shall find a quaint word or two. Guillim says the nettle is of so tetchie and froward a nature that no man may meddle with it, and he adds that a little girl being once stung thereby, complained to her father that there was such a curst herb in his garden, that it was worse than a dog, for it would bite them of its own house. Her father told her that the herb's nature was a notable impartiality, for friend and foe were alike to it. Then there's a pleasant epigram—

"'Tender-handed stroke a nettle,
And it stings you for your pains;
Grasp it like a man of mettle,
And it soft as silk remains."

Not that that applies to Mr. Malherb."

"No, indeed! Father is no nettle," said Grace sharply.

"Most true. The nettle's flower is plain, not exquisitely beautiful," he answered, looking at her. "Your father has the sturdy characteristics of his house, none of the prickles. A grand singleness of purpose marks his ways."

"He feels too deeply, if anything."

"And too much feeling so often obscures perception. It is unfortunate."

"There's the War Prison," said Grace, changing the subject; "that dreadful thing stretching out down there—a ring within a ring. I always think it is like something in Dante made real."

"Dante, eh? Hell, and so forth. Yes, that's a hell for many a brave, lonely heart. Doubtless there are lovers among 'em. By the way, I thought your dear father was a little hard upon the American prisoners—if I may dare to say so."

"He knows best," said Grace firmly; "and they do give a great deal of trouble. To break away from their mother country over a paltry question of money!"

"It's wonderful how soon matters of money make every question acute—lift it into a serious affair. Men will argue about their Maker, or the chances of Eternity, or the heat of the sun, with irreproachable temper; but let the matter be a sovereign—— As to America—taxes or no taxes—fools in our Parliament or fools in their Congress—it had to come. Look at a map of the world."

"In this war, at any rate, they are utterly mistaken," said Grace. "I know all about it, and facts are facts."

"And facts never contradict each other. That's a blessing."

"No doubt the wrong men are suffering now," she added, looking down upon the prison; "but that is a general rule in war."

"And life. What a beehive it is! 'A dungeon horrible on all sides round.' Hark! you can hear the 'sorrowful sighing of the prisoners.' Or rather you can hear their laughter. In fact, they appear to be playing a game in that far-off corner. It must be prisoners' base, no doubt."

"I pity every one of them, and especially the poor little powder-monkeys we captured in their ships," she said.

The huge circumference of the War Prison stretched beneath them, protected from the West under North Hisworthy Tor; the limbo, at once famous and infamous, lay here in summer sunshine; and never had Time thrown up a mushroom ring more grim, more grey, upon earth's lovely face. In the midst of wild hills and stone-crowned heights, skirted by the waters of a stream, separated from mankind by miles of scattered granite and black bog, the War Prison appeared. Late July ruled the land and brushed the hills with green; the light of the ling was just dawning, and all life rejoiced; but the solemn features of these stony mountains, fold upon fold and range upon range, take no softness to the stranger's eye at any season, and none who has not trodden it in freedom can love its austere face, or understand its chastened glory. Purple cloud-shadows drifted over the prison, and revealed the details of Alexander's sinister masterpiece. Previously they had been hidden by a great dazzle of sunlight.

Some thirty acres were enclosed by two walls, one within the other. The outer circle stood sixteen feet high; and separated from it by a broad military parade, extended the second wall, hung with bells on wires, and having sentry-boxes upon it at regular intervals, to overlook each prison yard. The main area of the gaol was of rounded shape, and contained five enormous rectangular masses of masonry radiating from the centre, like spokes from the hub of a wheel. At one side a segment was cut out of the circle, and this contained the Governor's offices, the turnkey's place, and other official buildings, together with an open space into which the country people were admitted for their daily traffic with the prisoners. Fuel, vegetables, poultry, butter, and other articles were bought and sold in this market, and upon its completion the gangs returned to their own divisions of the gaol. Each of the five main buildings mentioned was constructed to hold fifteen hundred men; all had two floors, and in the roof of every one was an additional great chamber used as a promenade at times of unusually inclement weather. Each block possessed its own wide exercise yard and shelter from snow or rain, its proper supply of sweet water always running, and its cachot, or prison within a prison, for punishment of the refractory and disobedient. A hospital and accommodation for petty officers included the edifices within the walls, while a quarter of a mile distant were barracks for four hundred troops, and various other buildings not all connected with the establishment of the prison. Of these the more conspicuous were a ruined cottage on the slope north-eastward of the outer wall, two new taverns, about which the soldiers swarmed like red ants; bakehouses, slaughter-houses, and private habitations that rapidly grew into a little street. The prisoners themselves were scattered by the thousand over their exercise yards, with red-coats stationed upon the inner wall around them. At one point outside the War Prison a large building arose and, guarded by the soldiery, a crowd of men laboured upon it.

"They are making a church," explained Grace. "The French build and the Americans do the carving and the woodwork inside. 'Tis to be dedicated to St. Michael and All Angels."

"Then you have a personal interest in it. And maybe I too shall have. We might even be married there."

"We might—though not to one another."

"Who knows? Time can work wonders."

"But only God can work miracles."

"Beautiful!" he said, "and comforting too; for I am one who holds that the age of miracles has not yet gone. You shall find the man of parts will make his own miracles."

CHAPTER VIII
A LITTLE ACCIDENT

As they descended into Prince Town Grace proposed to visit the church now growing there. She knew one Lieutenant Mainwaring, a young officer in command at these works; and now, glad enough to be of service and display his little power, the lad himself escorted Miss Malherb and Peter Norcot into a scene of stir and activity.

The Frenchmen chattered and sang to the clink of their trowels; while within, more thoughtful and more silent, a hundred Americans were engaged upon carpentering and carving in wood and stone. The strangers regarded Grace with curiosity. Save for the market folk, it was long since any among them had seen a woman, and this lovely girl awoke invisible emotion. Many a heart quickened, then slowed at the sight of her. She wakened the thought of women in lonely bosoms; she bridged rolling oceans with a sigh. Some cursed as memory probed their helplessness; some sneered; some winked and whistled and kissed their hands; some, sensitively conscious, turned away to hide their rags from these well-clothed and prosperous visitors.

They were soldiers and sailors, and they exhibited a wide variety of spiritual and mental attributes. Many among them crept about like thin ghosts clad in motley; a few looked stout and happy, despite their shameful clothing; some toiled in sulky and wooden silence; others maintained a gay and alert demeanour. They wore yellow roundabout jackets, mostly too small, rough waistcoats and pantaloons, shirts, caps of wool, and shoes made from list and wood, that gaped at every seam. Those amongst them whose shoes had fallen to pieces, cased their feet in strips of blanket, and so limped through the dreary time until authority should refurnish them.

Young Mainwaring was called away at this moment, and before he departed, the lad turned to an elderly American with grey hair and a distinguished bearing, and asked him a favour.

"May I beg you to show Miss Malherb and this gentleman round the works, Commodore Miller?" said Mainwaring; and the prisoner bowed a grave assent. In looking at this man's sad eyes and noble face one forgot the ridiculous rags that covered him.

"Come this way, young lady," he said. "You see our labours prosper. 'Twill be a monument for the generations that follow us. Our dust will mingle with this desert and be forgotten; our handiwork will remain."

Suddenly as they proceeded a cry from overhead made Grace stop, start back, and look upward. The warning saved her life, for six inches in front of her breast an object cut the air, and striking at the girl's feet upon the unpaved aisle, buried itself head first in the earth. It was a heavy chisel that had dropped from a beam and just missed Grace's head by inches. A cry rose on several lips; some shouted a curse at a man aloft on the beam from which the chisel had fallen; and Commodore Miller cried to him—

"Good God, Stark; what have you done?"

"Nothing—nothing at all," said Grace quickly. "I am not touched."

The man responsible for this accident was already half-way to the ground. He descended a rope ladder so swiftly as to endanger his own neck, and a moment later stood white and trembling before Grace Malherb.

"You stupid fellow," said Mr. Norcot; "'twas within a hair's-breadth of her life."

"I know it," answered the man. He was young and very tall, with a clean-shorn face and curling brown hair. "I can only ask you to forgive me. I turned suddenly and my foot struck the chisel."

"There's nothing to forgive," said Grace. "'Twas your voice arrested me. If you hadn't shouted, I should not be here now; so I owe you nothing but gratitude."

She smiled at him, and the youngster's colour came back to his cheek. Young Mainwaring, who had just returned, bustled forward with his sword clanking as the sailor spoke.

"You're good and brave, young mistress; and you understand. 'Twas a noble way to pardon me. A clumsy fool thanks you from his heart."

He was turning away when Grace spoke again, and blushed a little as she did so.

"Is that your chisel, sir?" she asked.

He nodded.

"Will you give it to me? May I keep it?"

Taking it from the hand of Commodore Miller, who had pulled it out of the earth, the girl looked at its two-inch blade and glittering edge.

"I should like to keep it," she repeated. "It ought to make me feel humble and grateful when I look upon it."

"I pray you keep it, then. And I shall thank God every time that I miss it," said the young man quietly.

Norcot was talking to Mainwaring aside, and in the silence that followed these words, his voice, unfortunately for himself, came directly to the American prisoner's ear.

"Surely not. The Devil draws the line somewhere. One would never presume to suggest a deliberate intention to murder an innocent girl."

The words came clear and cold; then, like a thunderbolt, a heavy fist fell between Peter's eyes, and he was on his back half unconscious. From trembling fear, from emotion almost prayerful at the thought of what might have happened, from frank and absolute sorrow for his carelessness, the young American leapt suddenly into ungovernable and blazing wrath. His very body seemed to expand and tower above the men around him. The Commodore leapt forward, but Stark shook him off like a child. "There!" he shouted, so that the naked walls rang with echoes. "Take that, whoever you are! To hint such a foul crime from your foul soul against an American!"

"Who's this lunatic? Arrest him," cried Mainwaring, and several soldiers hastened forward.

"Cecil Stark is his name—a sailor and a leader in Prison No. 4," said a sergeant.

"Yes, Cecil Stark of Vermont," answered the lad passionately. "Your General Burgoyne knew the name. 'Twas my kinsman that made him surrender and so caused Louis of France and the civilised world to acknowledge America free of your bullying, braggart nation. To hint at murder! You scoundrel—if you're a gentleman, you'll meet me; but you're not."

"Candidly," said Mr. Norcot, who was now restored to consciousness and sat on the ground with his hand over his eyes. "Candidly, I don't want to meet you again. You are young, and evidently Dartmoor has not tamed your fiery spirit. Nor has it polished your nautical wits. You strike before you hear—like your great nation. Tut, tut! My nose is broken. I was just declaring on my honour that to credit you with malice was madness. 'Twas this gentleman here who suspected that you dropped the chisel of set purpose."

"You said it!" exclaimed Stark, turning upon Lieutenant Mainwaring.

"I did, and I repeat it; and don't look at me with that insolent expression, or you'll repent it. 'Tis quite likely this was no accident."

The American regarded the little officer with contempt and astonishment.

"You're a knave to think that; and a coward to say it. At least you don't believe him, young mistress? I'd give up all hope of freedom, or heaven either, if I thought that any woman held me so vile."

"No woman, and no man either, would believe it," said Grace calmly, and Mainwaring's face flamed.

"Why, then, I'm content," declared Stark. "As for this red-coated monkey, he's neither one nor t'other and his opinion don't matter."

"Take him to the cachot!" cried the indignant soldier in a fury. "Away with him—insolent hound! We'll see what a few days of bread and water will do for him."

"And 'tis trash like this that they put into power over honest men!" said the prisoner, with great show of scorn. "In America no man can command others until he has learned to command himself."

"And did you use to command, my young hero?" asked Peter, who had now risen to his feet again.

Cecil Stark turned and laughed as he marched off with half a dozen soldiers for an escort.

"No, sir. You'll guess why. I'm a fool. Your nose will tell you that. But I'm learning. I shall be free again some day. Then I'll try to be wise. Meantime I beg you ten thousand pardons that I hit the wrong man. If 'tis ever in my power, I'll make generous amends."

He departed, and among the guard his great stature was revealed, for he towered above them.

"What a stinging sermon against disinterestedness," said Mr. Norcot, still patting his wounded face. "Yet 'tis nothing beside your escape. If you had died—my light would have gone out. Henceforth I should have lived with Petrarch under my pillow: 'To Laura—I mean Gracie—in death.'

"'For I was ever yours; of you bereft,
Full little do I reck all other care.'"

"We'd better go back to our horses," she answered. "He's a fine courageous gentleman. Only I very much wish that he had struck Lieutenant Mainwaring instead of you."

"So do I—cordially."

"And yet I'm not quite sorry, either; for you are so kind that you pass it with a jest; that little snappy soldier would have done dreadful deeds. Why do soldiers always bear themselves with such silly pride? Sailors don't."

"Sailors are not so swollen with their own importance, certainly; they've got more intellect as a rule; and don't blush to talk about their profession, like so many of these fatuous warriors. My dismal nose! Tut, tut! I see a mountain uplifting between my eyes. Henceforth there will be another tor on Dartmoor."

"Carry the chisel, please. He had a fine deep voice. He might have been an Englishman. Certainly he was right to be furious. I will never speak to Lieutenant Mainwaring more."

"Cecil Stark of Vermont, eh? He'll be stark enough after a week in a cachot. Let us home. My nose wants its luncheon of brown paper and vinegar."

The Commodore saw them to their horses, and Grace expressed an earnest hope that young Stark would not suffer for his natural anger.

"'Twill make his trouble light enough to know you are sorry for him," said the old sailor gallantly; then he gave the girl a hand into her saddle and soon she and Mr. Norcot were galloping homewards.

Anon Mrs. Malherb uplifted placid thanksgivings for her daughter's escape, and the farmer breathed forth indignation at the adventure of the chisel. He took a dark view of the incident, despite Grace's indignant assurances, and gave it as his opinion that where an American was concerned the worst motives might most justly be attributed. Yet he made far more of the incident than anybody else, yearned towards the girl with emotion hardly concealed, and hastened over his wine after dinner, that he might return to her presence.

"Come you here," he said, "and put your fingers in mine, so I may feel you are alive."

Therefore she sat beside him, and he patted her little hand and exhibited the actions of quickened love. Yet his face was stern the while, and betrayed no spark of the softness that marked his gestures and his words.

Peter's countenance had now taken upon itself the grotesqueness of a gargoyle, but he exhibited neither self-consciousness nor irritation. Indeed, he proved in a placid and didactic vein, moralised the incidents of the day and illuminated them with many quotations from many scribes. Conversation naturally turned upon America, and Norcot declared that the hot-headed and romantic person of Cecil Stark fairly typified his country.

"Most just," allowed Maurice Malherb. "America exhibits defects so glaring that he who runs may read. She is too vainglorious, too boastful, too impatient of control, and too ignorant ever to take commanding rank among the nations."

He mentioned his own failings without an omission.

"We must learn to walk before we can ride," said Mrs. Malherb. "And yet how often does a child try to copy its elders in advanced arts while yet the slow steps to those arts are hidden from it! 'Tis hard to judge the Americans, for they are made of our own flesh and blood."

"They are, in fact, our younger selves broke loose from tradition and control. They are scattered like sheep without a shepherd in the mighty pasture of the New World," said Norcot.

"Not so," returned his host. "England's virtues are just those most notoriously lacking in this upstart, ingrate race. They have broken the golden links of blood and brotherhood. They must abide by the consequences. Doctor Johnson was in the right of it touching America—as indeed always upon every subject."

"What think you, Kek?" asked Grace, that the discussion might be lightened.

The old servant had entered to mend the fire, for a peat or two always glowed upon the drawing-room hearth by night.

"No matter what I think, missy. 'Tis one of the few blessings of a common man that nobody do set a groat's value upon his views," returned Kekewich.

"So much the less need you mind uttering them," said Peter.

"We differ like flint and steel, yet strike some sparks between us—Kek and I," declared Malherb. "He is at once the best, honestest, truest, and most wrong-headed man I ever met in his class of life."

"Then you'll guess what I hold about this," answered Kekewich, who was indifferent alike to praise or censure. "I thinks that a Yankee be only an Englishman turned inside out. They says openly what we thinks in secret; but when it comes to doing—'tis 'devil take the hindmost' an' the weakest to the wall with them—just the same as it be with us. 'Tis a nation too young to deceive—same as a child be too young to deceive till it be growed. We shall hammer 'em this time; an' maybe next time; but the day will come when they've got too big to hammer. Then what? Us'll be 'pon top of our last legs some day. An' then everything will be differ'nt, except human nature. An' a beaten nation have a terrible long memory."

"This is anti-British! I blush for you, Kek," said Grace.

"Nay; the man is in the right," declared Peter. "A hundred years hence the friendship of America will be better worth having than anything in the world. Yet, where there's jealousy, there can be no real friendship. I hope that they will not always be jealous of us."

"You're cowards, both you and Kek," shouted Malherb. "You are worse than infidels, for you leave the Almighty out of your calculations altogether. We make war in the name of Right. We are the supreme example that history furnishes of an absolutely impartial nation. We display justice and mercy to the earth. We conquer by the hand of God. And will He desert us for a cowardice of curs, for a rabble that knows not justice, for a horde of highwaymen who mix the mortar for their dirty towns with negroes' blood?"

"Blare till you bust, Malherb," said Kek stoutly. "You won't alter it. God A'mighty's never seen on the side of the weak, an' so soon as thicky folks over the sea get strong enough to lather us, they'll most likely try to do it."

With this prophecy Mr. Kekewich departed.

"An ancient fool," commented Peter; "yet a witty one. I'm quite of his opinion; but our grandchildren, not we, will see the issue."

"Read 'Lear,'" said Malherb. "'Tis the only thing I ever do read in the way of high poetry. Lear is England—America has taken the vile daughter's part."

"Doubtless they'll allow it—if you'll carry the similitude through."

"Nay—England won't go mad—a little righteous rage—a breath from her nostrils, and these republican wolves will creep back into their dens."

"Yes—to breed there; to suckle the rising generations on——"

"Upon lies!" roared the other. "Upon vile lies against the mother country. To the Father of Lies let 'em go!"

Presently he cooled down, and Mr. Norcot, who had turned to Grace for a while, was wearied to hear Malherb reopen the subject.

"If they would but learn the dignity of manhood; if they would use their brains and read in the books that wise Englishmen have written on the highest duty of man, we might hope for the return of the prodigal son even yet," he said; and Peter answered—

"How true; how generous of you to put it so; how grand! 'The whole duty of man'—so vast, yet so simple—like Dartmoor. A dozen words gives one, a dozen lines from an artist's pencil will convey the vision of the other."

"'Tis all in the best authors, I'm sure," declared Annabel.

"It is, indeed. What does Juvenal say in an inspired moment? 'A sane mind in a sane body. A spirit above the fear of death; a spirit that can endure toil; that counts the labours of Hercules his joys and the joys of a certain goddess her shame; a spirit that can keep its——'" He was going to say "temper," but substituted "self-respect" out of consideration for his host, then made an end. "'Through virtue lies the life of peace! Grasp that fact, and Fortune has no divinity left in her.'"

"All good," admitted Malherb, "except in one particular. A life of peace is not to be prayed for. Peace is rust, and makes against human progress. Now, ladies, it is time that you retired."

Annabel and her daughter rose, and as he bid his girl "good night," the master's thoughts returned to her great escape. Whereupon he kissed her thrice, instead of once, and said, for her ear alone, "Thank God! Thank God!" in an abrupt and brusque but very earnest fashion.

CHAPTER IX
CHILDE'S TOMB

Mr. Norcot found the life at Fox Tor Farm so much to his taste that he prolonged his visit, and sent the young man, Thomas Putt, with a message to his sister Gertrude at Chagford for more clothes. He felt secretly hopeful that each day was strengthening his position, and, indeed, by riding to the War Prison and seeing the Commandant on behalf of Cecil Stark, he won some thanks and a definite expression of gratitude from Grace Malherb.

"They have released him out of the cachot," said Peter. "Once more he labours at the place of worship, 'pride in his port, defiance in his eye.'"

Together the man and maid continued their excursions upon Dartmoor, and Grace enjoyed both to hear and to tell stories and legends of the ancient desert. Its romance found an echo in her youthful spirit and awoke new intellectual interests in her life. She soon learned the story of each lonely circle, uplifted monolith, and empty barrow from the age of stone; of every ruined cot or cross erected in times mediÆval. Among these last, perhaps the most famous upon the Moor lay now within Malherb's own borders.

"Childe's Tomb" had met Grace's eyes when first she opened them upon a Dartmoor dawn. By a rivulet at the edge of Fox Tor Mire it stood, and she had gleaned its story and mourned the fate of the ancient hunter who fell there in winter tempest. Mr. Norcot, too, was familiar with the narrative, and since early boyhood he had gloated over its horrid details. Now he pretended but a misty recollection of the tale, so that he might listen to Grace.

The thing was in their eyes at the time, for they started on horseback and rode past it. Beside the cross, Harvey Woodman, his son, Richard Beer, Thomas Putt, and another labourer were collected at a task. They worked upon each side of the little river that ran beside "Childe's Tomb," and levelled the banks to make a ford at a shallow point of the water. Here they talked together when aching backs required rest; and it happened that their master and his guest were the theme of the moment.

"I'll hold for Mister Peter," declared Putt. "He gived me a week's wages for going to Chaggyford; an' he told me just so friendly as you might, when he seed me bringing in trout, that a grasshopper was a killing bait at this time of year. Of course I know as much about grasshoppers as any man living; yet 'twas a very great condescension in him."

Uncle Smallridge made reply. He was now past work, but had walked from his distant cottage for the pleasure of a little conversation with familiars.

"'Tis the human nature in 'un that counts," he said. "You'll find as a general thing the best men ban't the easiest to get on with."

"Malherb's chock full o' human nature," declared Mr. Woodman.

"So full that he bursts wi' it—like a falling thunderbolt, till a man almost calls on the hills to cover him," admitted Putt.

"That's because you catched it for idleness," answered Woodman. "Mr. Narcot be like a machine oiled up to the last cog an' going so smooth an' suent that a child may turn the handle; an' maister's like a drashel[*] in clumsy hands—you don't know where 'twill fall next. But give me our man with all his faults an' fire."

[*] Drashel: A flail.

"I'm afraid he'll try you sorely yet," foretold Smallridge, and little guessed how near the ordeal had come.

"I'll cleave to him so long as it holds with honesty," said Beer. "What mazes me is this: Mr. Peter never does nothing out of the common, nor never lapses from the level way of man with man, nor says a hard word to a fly; an' yet I doan't neighbour with him; an' t'other, despite his rages and crooked words and terrible rash goings on—as will damn your eyes for a look—why, I'd hold out for him against an army."

"'Tis his weakness draws you to him," said Uncle Smallridge. "I know. Us all likes to catch our betters tripping. It levels up the steep gulf that's fixed between master an' man, an' makes us more content with ourselves. You know how extra good t'other children get when one be extra naughty. This here Norcot is above us in his estate, an' that we can forgive, for us can't help it; but we'm never too comfortable or kindly towards them as be much above us in vartues."

"For my part, it don't seem natural," said Harvey Woodman. "I don't believe in these great flights of goodness in man or woman. Here and there a parson will stand out like a beacon on a hill, for 'tis his trade; but not them as lives to make money like Peter Norcot. When what shows in a man be so shining, I always ax myself about what don't show."

"'Tis your jealous spirit," said Putt.

"All the same, I don't care for a man as hides behind hisself like that wool-stapler do. The Devil's got his corner in him, same as he have in every mother's son of us."

"He may have cast him out, however," ventured Putt.

"Cast him out at five-an'-thirty years of age—an' him a bachelor! No fey."

"Well, he ban't bound to belittle hisself before the likes of us," said Putt.

"Here he be, anyway," added Beer, for Grace and Peter now approached.

She was finishing the tragic history of Childe as she rode beside him.

"And so the monks of Tavistock found the poor frozen gentleman where this cross now stands, and they took him away that he might be buried in their town, for under his last will and testament those who buried him were to possess all his estates. Others sought then to gain the body; but the good monks were too clever for them, and inherited the lands of Plymstock."

"Ah! 'they must rise betime, or rather not go to bed at all, that will overreach monks in matters of profit,' as Fuller observes."

"The people hereabout call it 'Childe's Tomb,' yet it can only be a cenotaph, if the story is true."

"The whole thing is a legend, be sure. We shall never know the real use of this cross," answered Peter.

"But might easily find a new one," said Mr. Kekewich, who walked beside Grace on his way to the workers. "Them stepstones be just the very thing we're wanting to bridge the river here."

"Oh, Kek! how can you?" cried Grace.

"Pull down a cross? Tut, tut, iconoclast!" exclaimed Mr. Norcot.

"You may use wicked words, but stone be stone," answered the head man of Fox Tor Farm sulkily; "an' what was one way of marking a grave in the old time may very well stand for a bridge to-day. Look at they fools! What do they think they be doing?"

Woodman heard the question.

"We'm making a ford, and you'm the fool, not us," he replied stoutly.

"What did the master say? Tell me that," asked Kekewich.

"He said 'a bridge,' for I heard him," declared Norcot.

"Ess, he did, an' when he sez 'bridge' he don't mean 'ford'; an' when he sez 'steer' he don't mean 'heifer,' do he? A bridge has got to be builded. So the sooner you fetch gunpowder an' go 'pon the Moor to blast out a good slab of stone as'll go across here without a pier, the better."

"He don't always say what he mean, all the same," retorted Putt, who was in a fighting mood. "Yesterday he told me I was a pink-eyed rabbit, good for nought, an' this marning he called it back, an' said he was sorry he'd spoke it. That shows."

"That shows he can change his own mind; it don't show the likes of you can change it for him. Here he comes, anyway, an' what I say, I say: that thicky cross-steps would make a very tidy bridge, an' save a week's work."

"You'd touch that cross!" gasped Smallridge. "You—a foreigner from Exeter!"

"Us have a right to it."

"No man have a right to a stone once 'tis fashioned into a cross; an' if you was a Christian 'stead of a crook-backed heathen, you'd know it an' if a finger be laid against it, I'd not give a straw for the future of any man amongst us," cried Uncle Smallridge, rising to his feet in great agitation.

"Fright childer with your twaddle, not a growed-up soul," answered Kekewich. "But no call to shake your jaw an' bristle up your old mane like that. My word ban't law. Here the master cometh, an' you'm like to hear more than will be stomachable when he sees what you've been doing."

"The fault was mine, and I'll take the blame," answered Richard Beer. "You men bide quiet an' let his anger fall upon me."

Grace and Norcot, not desiring to see the labourers' discomfiture, rode away, and a moment later Maurice Malherb arrived upon the scene. His strong face, scarred with passion uncontrolled, grew dark again now, and the kindly look vanished from his eyes as the customary storm-cloud of black eyebrow settled upon them.

"What are you doing? What means this digging?" he asked.

"'Tis me as done it, your honour," answered Beer. "I thought as a ford——"

"A ford! What business have you to dare to think? I said a bridge."

"The stone——"

"Look round you, you lazy rascal! Stone—stone—curse the stone! Scratch the ground anywhere, and it grins at you with its granite teeth! Let that bridge be finished by sundown or clear out, the whole pack of ye! A ford! And had I said 'ford' you would have built a bridge!"

Mr. Beer grew pale behind his beard, but did not reply, and Mr. Woodman also kept his temper and addressed his son.

"Go an' harness two bullocks to a truckamuck,"[*] he said, "an' you, Putt, slip up to the shed an' get some irons as you'll find there."

[*] Truckamuck: A sort of sledge.

Then he turned to his master and spoke again—

"Us'll set to work this instant moment, your honour."

"That's well—by sundown, mind."

Malherb was riding off when old Smallridge addressed him, and the ancient man precipitated the very accident he feared.

"An' if it please you, your honour's goodness, I do pray as you won't let no hand touch this here holy tomb. Kekewich, as be grey enough to know better, have said that the stepstones would make a very tidy bridge an' save labour; but t'others tell me you never pay no heed to him, an' I hope your honour won't now."

The two old men glared at each other, and Malherb answered. What he heard was nearly true, but that he heard it from Uncle Smallridge instantly angered him. That the labourers should have perceived how Kekewich was ignored—that these hirelings should note their master's indifference to the wisdom of his servitor—again awoke Malherb's temper.

"They say I don't heed Kekewich? Then they lie. Kek's little finger holds more sense than all their stupid heads together."

Whereon Mr. Kekewich shone around him as the sun emerging from a cloud.

"That cross there—good wrought stone wasted," he explained. "They steps might have been made for the bridge we want. So I told 'em; an' all they did was to show the whites of their silly eyes."

The master reflected but a moment; then he issued a command. He spoke in the name of reason—a favourite expedient with the unreasonable.

"Good practical sense. Now we'll see if I run counter to Kekewich. He's right and you're wrong. Here are stones lying useless on my land, and I want even such for a purpose. Reason points to them, and I will use them. Pull down that cross and build my bridge."

"I'd rather take other stones and chance the extra work," said Richard Beer uneasily.

"Pull down that pile there and build my bridge before nightfall, or go your way—all of you," repeated Malherb. Then he departed and left the workers to make decision.

"An' the cross itself, if us knocks off one arm, will be just what we want for the pigs' house!" cried Kekewich triumphantly.

"For God's love throw down your tools and come away!" begged Smallridge, his ancient voice rising into a scream. "Turn your backs upon this place before it's too late."

"Hop off! Hop off an' croak somewhere else, you old raven!" replied Kek indignantly. "Let these men use their brains without your bleating. Ban't I old too? 'Tis vain growing old unless you grow artful with it. If they have got their intellects, they won't mind you."

"Nor you—you limb of the Devil," groaned Smallridge. "You—with his pitchfork in your forehead. I wish to God I'd never heard tell of you."

Kekewich turned from him to Harvey Woodman and the rest.

"'Tis up ten o'clock," he said, "an' you strong men in the prime of life have got to decide what you'll do about it, not this tootling old mumphead here. Use your sense an' say whether you'll look for a new master an' mistress an' seven shilling a week, or bide here with better money an' corn an' cider an' all the fatness of the earth. I'll speak no word; only I might remind you, Beer, an' you, Woodman, that you've got wives—that's all."

"Then 'tis for us to decide," said Woodman solemnly—"us four: me, Beer, Putt, and you, Mark Bickford. Here us stands. Now you have your tell first, Thomas Putt, 'cause you'm the youngest."

"I'm a poor tool for such a job, an' I shan't say nothing," answered Putt. "I'll abide by what you men do."

"So much for you then," said Woodman. "Us knows you haven't got more sense than, please God, you should have, yet 'tis a question whether you did ought to let another man keep your conscience. Now, Bickford, what's your view?"

Mr. Bickford, a man of colourless mind in the affairs of life, showed sudden and unexpected strength of purpose.

"I guess I'll bide an' pull the cross down," he said. "Master do clapper-claw a bit, but he pays me eight shilling a week; an' where I gets such money as that 'tis my duty to stop. You may squeak," he added to Uncle Smallridge, who uttered an inarticulate exclamation of misery at his decision, "but I be keeping company; an' I also be keeping my old bed-lying mother out o' the poorhouse. An' I'd pull down fifty crosses afore I'd lose eight shilling a week. If there's a mischief in it, ban't of my brewing."

"Well, then, 'tis for me an' you, Harvey," proceeded Richard Beer. "An' since I'm the older man, I'll come last an' wind up on it when you've spoke your mind."

"A man like me with a wife an' son be in the worse fix of all," declared Woodman moodily. "If evil follows, I may be twisting a scourge for the next generation, whereas you that be childless can only catch it in your own case an' Dinah's. Still, to go back to peat-cutting after Fox Tor Farm is a great fall."

"The Devil's tempting you, Harvey!" cried Mr. Smallridge.

"Shut your mouth, or I'll hit 'e on it!" retorted Kekewich savagely. "Leave 'em to fight it out. They've got to do their duty, an' I'd like to know whenever the A'mighty punished any man for doing that?"

"There's my duty to my master an' my duty to my conscience. 'Tis our duty to our master to do what he pays us to do; and us be paid to work, not to think," argued Woodman.

"If evil's to be hatched, us won't catch it," declared Bickford. "When a man sets a rick on light, ban't the flint an' steel they has up for arsony, but the chap hisself. We'm no more than the flint an' steel in this matter."

"We've got immortal parts, however," argued Beer. "We may hide our bodies behind another chap; but can us hide our souls? What I want to know is the nature of the harm we'll do. What's the name of it?"

"'Tis insulting the Lord of Hosts," said Uncle Smallridge tremulously.

"Gammon!" answered Kekewich. "'Tis obeying them as the Lord have set in authority over you. We've got to do with a dead stone; an' the chap who be buried here found his way to heaven or hell long afore the Lord, in a weak moment, let your parents get a fool like you."

"'Tis the shape that shakes us, not the stone," explained Woodman; "an' I wish you'd decide an' have done with it, Richard Beer. We are ready to go by you, for 'tis well knowed that you've a conscience as works so active as your skin in harvest time."

"Well," replied Beer, "I can't see no flaw in what Bickford said. My conscience is allowed pretty peart, I believe; an it don't give me a twinge in this matter; though I'd much rather not do it all the same."

"Suppose the lightning struck us," suggested Putt, and Beer scanned the sky.

"Can't without a Bible miracle; an', good or bad, the size of this job be too small for that. What harm falls will most surely fall 'pon master, not us."

"If I thought Miss Grace would suffer, I'd see the stone rot to dust afore I'd touch it," declared Putt.

"Whether or no, we've got to pull down Childe's Tomb, an' make a bridge; an' my conscience, an' my wages, an' my common sense all point the same way, so here goes," summed up Mr. Beer.

"I'm with you," said Bickford.

"An' me too," added Putt; "an' come Judgment Day, if there's a sharp word said to me, I shall name your name, Dick Beer."

"An' you, Harvey?"

For answer Mr. Woodman turned to the sledge that his son had brought up. From this he took a rope and some long irons.

"Come on! Let's get it over. Once the cross be down, our minds will grow easier. 'Tis the shape, I tell you, as makes us so weak for a moment."

"God forgive you, souls!" cried Smallridge; "an' mind, when you'm wading waist-deep in trouble, that it weren't no fault of mine. Bide till I be out of sight, that's all. Then you an' this here crooked old Apollyon can go to your wicked work."

He looked at Kekewich, shook his head at the doomed monument, and hobbled away as fast as his legs would carry him.

"Us had better all spit over our left shoulders for luck," said Mr. Beer; "then we can begin. An' see that all four of us hang upon the rope together, so as the work an' the pay be equally divided."

Harvey Woodman's young son prepared to give assistance, but his father roughly bade him begone.

"You drop that rope an' get up to the farm to your mother," he said. "She'll find you a job. Us don't want you to-day."

CHAPTER X
THE FIRSTBORN

The destruction of Childe's Tomb awoke no protest upon the county-side, for antiquaries had not yet turned their attention to the interesting and obscure relics of former ages scattered over Dartmoor. A few intelligent men mourned that another mediÆval landmark had been sacrificed to the advance of civilisation; then the matter was forgotten, save at Fox Tor Farm, where great unrest still reigned among the workers.

The women exhibited chief concern; but while Annabel and Grace Malherb showed sentimental regret and the master laughed at them for their folly, Dinah Beer and Mary Woodman took a far more serious view of the incident, and reduced their husbands to the extremity of uneasiness. They foretold disaster upon all concerned; Mr. Kekewich they specially tormented, and declared that, as arch instigator of the outrage, upon him the first grief must fall. He cared nothing; but Richard, Harvey, and others went in growing fear. They longed for weeks and months to pass that they might be removed by time from the hour of their evil deed; then, as each uneventful day dwindled and each night passed by, they drew a little nearer toward peace of mind. After a month had passed they plucked up spirit and faced the unseen with steadier gaze.

"Another week gone an' nothing said," whispered Putt one morning to Harvey Woodman, where they worked at wall-building. He glanced sideways up to heaven as he spoke with a gesture of suspicion.

"No—the world goes on very easy. What did Peter Norcot give 'e for taking the pack-horse with his leather boxes back to Chaggyford?"

"There again—good luck surely. A crown I got by it; an' I ate my meat with Mason's mother an' sister who live there. Mason be Mr. Norcot's man, and his sister is called Tryphena. An' I be going over again, for she said, when I axed her, that pinky rims to the eyes didn't stand against a chap in her judgment. She thought 'twas a beauty, if anything. Her be a few year older'n me; but that often works very well, an' keeps down the family."

"You'd best to be careful, all the same," said Woodman. "The woman as you meets half-way, often makes you go t'other half afore you think you've started."

"I won't hear no word against that female from you or any man," declared Thomas Putt, growing very red.

"From me you certainly won't, seeing as I never heard tell of her afore this minute," replied Woodman calmly. "Only, as a married man, I say go slow. When a girl tells you such eyes as yourn be beautiful, she's getting to that state of mind when they put a home of their own afore truth and common sense an' everything."

Putt was about to answer rather warmly when Richard Beer appeared. His beard blew about him; his eyes were sunk into his head, and dull care stared from them.

"It's come!" he said. "I've held my peace these twenty-four hours; an' longer I will not. The ill luck have set in! There's no more doubt about it."

"Have it hit you?" asked Putt, his anger vanishing; "because if so, us ban't safe neither."

"Not directly. It strikes the farm. There's scores o' dozens o' moles in the meadow; and the rats have come to the pig-styes in an army."

"They be natural things," declared Putt. "You might expect 'em. Where there's pigs there's rats."

"Yes, but not like a plague. They've come up in a night, same as them frogs in Egypt."

"You'm down-daunted about nought," answered Woodman. "Read what some of they Bible heroes had to suffer. There's nought like dipping into the prophet Job when you'm out of heart with your luck. 'Twill make you very contented. My gran'faither always read Job slap through after he'd had a row wi' the Duchy."

"As for me, I shall bide wi' the man so long as he can pay wages," said Putt.

They passed to their work; and elsewhere Maurice Malherb, not ignorant of the verminous inroad upon fields and styes, was debating whether he should sink his pride and summon Leaman Cloberry. But while time passed by and he hesitated, there came a post and tidings so momentous that the rats and moles were forgotten.

Now, indeed, did trouble like an armed man break in on Fox Tor Farm; the light of the Malherbs vanished, and their hope set in lasting sorrow. Noel Malherb, serving under Sir Rowland Hill, with the right of Lord Wellington's army in the Peninsula, had fallen before Vittoria.

Annabel and her daughter took this grief into secrecy, and were hidden from the world through many weeks; Malherb fought it down, and concealed his emotion from all eyes. He laughed not less seldom, he fell into anger more often than of yore.

"Pharaoh cracked his heart when his first was took," said Woodman to Kekewich; "but this man——"

"His heart's hid in his breast, not open to your eye," answered the other. "His heart be cracked all right, though he don't come to us an' say so. But I know—by the voice of 'un, an' the long, lonely rides he takes all about nothing, an' his look when he stares at his darter—a miser's eyes—same as that old mully-grub Lovey Lee when she claws a bit of money."

"'Childe's Tomb' have done its work—Uncle Smallridge didn't lie."

"Seeing as this poor young gentleman was shot down and dust in his grave weeks an' weeks afore we touched the cussed cross—for I heard master say so—you'll allow you're talking foolishness."

"The Lord can work backwards so easy as he can work forwards. Miss Grace will be the next, you mark me."

"Norcot'll have her come presently," said Kekewich. "She've got to wipe her mother's tears for the present. This here cruel come-along-of-it have cut ten years off the life of Missis."

The ancient spoke truth, for Annabel Malherb's sufferings under her great trial proved terrible. They were more objective than her husband's. The family and the race were nothing to her; she only knew that a French bullet had taken the life of her firstborn, and she would never look into his brown eyes again or put her cheek against his. Even her boy's beloved dust was buried within the hecatombs of Spain, and her tears would never fall upon his grave. But Malherb, beside this present misfortune of his son's sacrifice for the country, had a deeper and more lasting pang of ambition blighted and hope for ever dead. He had toiled in vain; he had lifted this stout dwelling as a heritage for none. Presently his daughter would wed with Norcot, and no young eyes of his own race would see the larches and Scotch firs of his planting grow into trees; no heir would note the ebony and golden lichens write dignity and age upon his roof of slate, nor see the mosses mellow his granite walls. Aliens must follow and the name of Malherb would vanish, like the fragrant memory of last year's fern.

Then, within six weeks of the ill tidings, a great conceit suddenly flashed upon Malherb; and as the Witch of Endor called forth that awful shade of Samuel to her own admiration, so did this man raise the unexpected spirit of a thought. Suddenly, amidst the mean and familiar imaginings of life, uprising like a giant from among the dwarfish throng of practical and common notions, there stalked tremendous an Idea; and he stood astonished before it, appraised its magnitude and welcomed it for an inspiration from the Gods.

This fancy came to Malherb as he pursued the prosaic business of casting figures; and he threw down his pen, picked up his hat, and hastened into the little walled garden of the farm to find his wife. He longed to tell of this message that seemed to point to peace; but his impatience was not set at rest for the space of hours. Mrs. Malherb had ridden out on a pillion behind Mr. Beer, and Dinah could say nothing of their destination.

Irritated at the accident, Maurice himself strode on to the Moor, and proceeded towards Fox Tor, that he might note his wife returning and reach her as quickly as possible.

His way took him past a favourite haunt of his daughter's, and when he reached the broken stonework of the tor, Malherb surprised Grace in serious conversation with a young man.

The girl had gone out alone to pass her summer hours with mournful thoughts. The horizon of her life was clouded now, and already sorrow in the present and cares for the future robbed her young days of their former contentment. Her heart was warm—a delicious empty chamber that awaiteth one as yet unknown. Beyond the dark grief of her brother's death, another now lurked, and Time, that should have dawdled with her in these rosy hours of youth, while yet her heart had never throbbed to one loved name, raced fast and pitiless as the east wind. Down his closing avenues, outlined immediately ahead, stood one at the horizon of her life, appeared a man as the goal and crown of her maiden race. There beamed the neat, trim, and amiable apparition of Mr. Peter Norcot. It was no precocity that forced poor Grace into thinking so much of love, while yet she knew it not; but in her esteem, love and marriage embraced the same idea, and now she marvelled mutely to find not love, but a very active aversion reigning in her mind against the wool-stapler. Her father's attitude and repeated assurances that wed with Peter she must, had thus thrown her thoughts upon the affairs of womenkind, herself not yet a woman. But love haunted her, and wonder concerning it. The chance young squire, who visited Fox Tor Farm, had been fluttered to his green heart's core could he have seen what was in Grace's mind or behind her drooping lids. With interest she regarded the better-looking amongst her father's visitors, wondered who loved them beside their mothers, speculated as to what would happen if some sudden, invisible spark flashed from their bosoms and found fuel within her own.

One friend she had, and he was a boy even as she was a girl. John Lee belonged to the people, yet he revealed a different mien from them. The common speech was upon his tongue, the common clothes of earth-colour hid his shapely form; yet he had a way of speaking the one and wearing the other that set a mark of distinction upon him. This lad possessed more imagination than diligence; he knew the Moor with a different knowledge to that of Beer, or Woodman, or Leaman Cloberry. He had garnered its legends and its mysteries. He understood something of the spirit of the eternal hills; he loved

Their colours and their rainbows and their clouds,
And their fierce winds and desolate liberty."

He could read, and owned a book or two hidden in the hay-loft where he dwelt outside his grandmother's cottage. He called the plants by their local names, and was skilled in the lore of wild things and the weather.

Grace found him very agreeable company and, upon first mentioning at home that she sometimes met and spoke with him, her father did not take it amiss.

"Get the boy to tell you where that old demon on the hill has hidden my amphora," he said.

"As if he knew!" murmured Mrs. Malherb, who was a woman of literal mind.

"The boy doubtless knows nothing," her husband answered; "but 'tis within the bounds of possibility that he might find out."

Henceforward Grace, holding herself at liberty to do so, often met John Lee and often made appointments to meet him. He taught her Dartmoor; he rode his pony by her side and gloried in the manifold virtues of her new hunter, the great and gallant 'CÆsar.'

While Peter Norcot was at Fox Tor Farm, young John kept clear of it. Indeed, he had plenty of work when he chose to work, and toiled by fits and starts at peat-cutting, lichen-gathering, or attending upon some military sportsman from the War Prison. But his desire and ambition at eighteen years of age was to win employment in the kennels of Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt. From such a position, if blessed by good luck, he trusted some day to rise and become a whipper-in. Of any higher destiny he did not dream. To be huntsman was a position in life that rose almost as much above his hopes as to be Master.

Now, some while before Maurice Malherb had entered on to the Moor, so that he might see and meet his wife returning home, John Lee, walking near a spot very well known to him as one of Grace's favourite haunts, found her there where the grass made pleasant cushions amid the granite boulders upon the southern slope of Fox Tor; where the music of a little waterfall rose and fell softly at the pleasure of the wind; and where the Beam's mighty shoulders basked under the sun and took a tremulousness of outline in the hot air which arose from off them.

Rising suddenly out of the hollows where the streamlet ran, John Lee appeared within thirty yards of Grace, and, to his dismay and concern, discovered that she wept. Some coincidence of thought with the solemn natural things about her; some clash or chime of sadness at the spectacle of her future and the vast and featureless mountain uplifted before her eyes, struck the emotional chord that loosens tears, and Grace suffered them to flow and carry away a little of her sorrow in the glittering drops. She was young, and hope her proper heritage, therefore she grew happier presently, and when the miser's grandson appeared, hesitated, and, with a rueful countenance, began to creep away, she called to him and bade him come.

"I'm only crying, John Lee. Hast never seen a girl cry before?"

He advanced upon this, and his handsome young face was all blushes.

"Never, Miss Grace; an' never want to. I would I could take your trouble on my own shoulders."

"Your grandmother never weeps?"

"Not she. A granite wall sweats more moisture than her eyes fall tears. But you—— The young gentleman, your brother, died like a hero. 'Tis a great and noble thing to be a hero."

"How can a word stand for his dear beautiful face and bright eyes and kind voice? Never a maid had such a brother as Noel. Hero! Hero!" She lifted her voice bitterly. "An empty-handed, senseless sound to take the place of a dear brother. Not one pang does it lessen—no, not even in my father's heart, though he says the syllables over and over again, like a parrot. Our hope and our glory gone—that is what his death means."

"I can't say nothing—I wish I could. I'd go and die to-morrow if 'twould bring him back," declared John earnestly. "You'll think 'tis easy to tell such things, but God's my Judge, I mean it."

"You are not unlike him in a way, John. He had your manner of holding up his neck, and your mouth and your neat ears."

"I'm an awful fuzz-poll—like they curly-haired coloured men at the War Prison."

She did not answer for a moment, then spoke again of her sorrows.

"My heart's an empty nest now—all my plans to live with Noel for ever and love his children are broken down. And I had a secret hope that he"—she stopped, then decided to finish the sentence—"that he might soften my father."

"Your father be stern enough, but not to you—sure never to you."

He spoke with conviction and Grace did not reply. A black-and-orange humble bee was working in the wild thyme at her feet. It tumbled and laboured from cluster to cluster of the flowers, pulled each tiny purple corolla to itself and dipped into each for the stores there hidden. It droned hither and thither, full of business, and at last, lifting itself heavily, flew away with a cheerful boom of thanksgiving. So near Grace's ear did it go, that she started, and Lee, though grave enough at heart, laughed.

"He won't hurt 'e. They bumbles have no spears, I believe—anyway they never use 'em."

"I hate Peter Norcot!" she said aloud, suddenly, and with such vehemence that John started and stared.

"I hate him—hate—hate—hate him! Hark at the echo. I've told the echo that many a time. And the echo always answers very wisely, 'Hate him!'"

"What have you got against him, if I may ax?"

"Nothing; and that's everything. He's perfect."

"An' do love your very shadow, so they say."

"I forgot that. There is reason enough for not liking him."

"Then you'll have to hate every man on the Moor. They all love you—even I dare to do it."

"Love me?"

"Ess fay! Be it uncivil in me to say so, Miss?"

"I should think it was, indeed!"

"Truth's truth. I can't help it. Never seed nothing like you. I'd go to the end of the world for you. I wish 'twas my happy lot to be your servant."

"Would you kill Mr. Norcot for me?"

He was silent; then he nodded.

"Well, John Lee, I had sooner you loved me than Mr. Norcot should."

"Don't say it even in fun. You don't know what it means to me. I'm up eighteen year old now—a man. But I hate Mr. Peter, too, for that matter."

"Because I do?"

"Yes, an' for another reason; because granny likes him. He gived her money once. She said afterwards that there was that in his face pleased her fancy, for he'd got a depth in it that would make rocks and water do his will."

"She's quite wrong there. He's a most superficial man and amiable to weakness. He is always making feeble jests and quoting the poets. He is a thing of shreds and patches. He put your grandmother into an old verse once. I laughed, though I hate him. He said:—

"'Through regions by wild men and cannibals haunted,
Old Dame Lovey Lee goes alone and undaunted;
But, bless you, the risk's not so great as it's reckoned;
She's too plain for the first and too tough for the second!'"

"He may laugh at her," replied John Lee. "But she don't laugh at him. When he'd gone that day, she told me that he was the first man ever she clapped eyes on as could be her master if he liked; and I shivered to hear her say it."

"He's welcome to be her master; he never shall be mine," said Grace resolutely; and as she spoke, her father suddenly appeared before them.

CHAPTER XI
MALHERB'S IDEA

John Lee touched his hat, while Grace rose and welcomed her father, who, still dominated by his Idea, proved in a very amiable mood.

"You grow fast—you'll be as tall as your grandmother at this rate. Not that you are like her," he said to the lad. John smiled and touched his hat again.

Malherb scanned the finely built youngster, and thought of his dead son. There was a resemblance, as Grace recently remarked to John himself, and the father, who had a picture of Noel Malherb painted lifelike upon memory, now perceived this similitude. For a moment he stared in silence, then turned to Grace.

"I seek your mother. Has she gone to visit Lady Tyrwhitt?"

"Yes, she is at Tor Royal, father. Indeed, she should be on her way home again by this time."

"Then we'll walk along to meet her. And you, John Lee, tell that old witch up there I'm not asleep. I shall have my amphora yet; and the reckoning, when it does come, will mean a halter for her."

"Your servant, sir; an' I'll be sure to speak the message."

As they proceeded together, Grace put a petition to her father, and he was about to decline it, but bethought him. The Idea entirely turned upon Grace herself, and he had no desire to cross her will in minor matters, though she still differed from him upon the great question of her own future.

"Father," she said, "I ought to have a groom."

"Why, that boy we have left is as good as a groom to you."

"In a way. But I feel there should be a little more distinction about the matter. In truth, John Lee's pony can't live with my beautiful 'CÆsar' and if he was better mounted he could show me the country that you and I are going to hunt in the winter. 'Twould be well for me to ride over it, and you are too busy to take me. Now Lee, if he had a horse and a livery—and how wonderfully well he rides."

"That's true. I had observed it. Better far than any man I have seen on the Moor—excepting Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt and myself. A splendid natural seat."

"Let him be my servant and look after your hacks and the hunters. But only if you can afford it. I know you have had to spend a great deal lately."

"Yes, yes; we must spend to get; and Dartmoor wants a good deal of cash down in advance on a bargain. But I think I generally get the worth of my money. Well—he shall come. I like a livery or two about me, and poor Kekewich will never cut much of a figure in his. The boy is a fine up-standing boy, and civil. You shall have him. He may help me too—in the direction of the Malherb amphora."

"Thank you, thank you! Was there ever such a kind father?"

"I've only got you now," he said. "I'm not a talker, and it is a vile thing to see a man of quality show his feelings; but between father and daughter affection is natural, and may even be declared in reason. You're the apple of my eye."

"How well I know it!"

She kissed him and, occupied with his Idea, he took her hand. Thus they walked along until Mrs. Malherb appeared on her homeward way from Tor Royal. She sat behind Richard Beer on a pillion, for she was fearful of horses, and never rode alone.

Annabel described an Émeute at the War Prison.

"It seems," she said, "that the poor Americans are the chief danger there. They were sent up from the hulks at Plymouth, because they were always escaping from them; and now more than one has got clean away in a disturbance. They think that these Desperate men will presently be recaptured, or else lose their lives in the lonely desert wastes towards Cranmere Pool. They may, however, by good fortune get into touch with their fellow-countrymen on parole at Ashburton or Tavistock, and so make to the coast and escape to France from Dartmouth or Tor Quay."

"If I should meet a runaway!" cried Grace.

"You would ride him down, I should hope, unless he yielded and followed you," said her father.

Mrs. Malherb nearly dropped Richard's pillion-belt and fell to the ground.

"La! what sport for a young maid!" she cried.

That night after they had gone to rest, the master placed his great inspiration before Annabel, and her eyes grew round in the darkness. The blind was up, for Malherb allowed the daylight to waken him, and the seasons regulated the hour of his rising. Now Mrs. Malherb watched a star cross the eastern-facing casement; but only her eyes perceived that distant sun, for her mind was occupied with a closer matter.

"I have hit upon a thought which shows how I may still work to some purpose here and not make a place for strangers to enjoy when we are gone," he said. "A Malherb shall have all——"

"You cannot mean that you will forgive your nephews!" cried his wife in amazement.

"'Nephews'! No. Curse the pack of 'em—curs that disgrace the name. They're not even honest. And 'twas not I that quarrelled with them, but they with me. I am fifty-one. In a year I shall be fifty-two, and Grace will be marriageable. Eighteen's a very proper age. My grand-aunt, Sibella, was a famous beauty at sixteen, wedded with the Duke of Sampford on her seventeenth birthday, had a daughter upon her eighteenth, and was a grandmother when she was thirty-seven. By the time Grace is nineteen she will be the mother of a son."

"Good gracious, my love, how you run on!"

"Not at all. I'm simply stating the probable course of nature. A son, I say; and that son comes to us. When the lad is one-and-twenty I shall be but seventy or so. What is that? Nowadays, such a man as I am is merely middle-aged at seventy. We have the lad for our own. He must be given to us. By God, it shall be a condition of the match! And he shall be called Malherb, and shall found a line of 'em here instead of my boy, who is dead and gone. 'Tis but a jump of a generation."

The stars at the window laughed in their courses and tumbled before Mrs. Malherb's eyes. Her husband abounded in fantastic projects, but this scheme was egregious even for him. She felt the futility of it, not the humour. One objection specially beat upon her mother's heart, and that she uttered—

"You couldn't expect Grace to give up her first baby, my dear."

"Why not? Why not? Not to me? Not to her own father? 'Slife! Who should be better able than I to make a man of a young fellow? He would be my personal companion. He would be brought up from the cradle with this place in his eyes. He would understand that he was a Malherb and all that that means. 'Tis a very proper idea and, if the girl's not a fool, she'll be the first to see it. Whether she sees it or not, however, don't matter a button."

"For God's sake say no such thing to her!"

"Am I likely to? Do credit me with some understanding. All the same, it will have to be. My heart's on it. The high traditions of the family—Norcot will assent readily, I have little doubt. I can twist him round my finger."

"I fear Grace cares less and less for him."

"I know better. Even you will allow me some knowledge of human nature. Her indifference is assumed. She is deeply interested in him."

"Deeply interested? Yes; in how to escape him."

"Be that as it may, within six weeks of her eighteenth birthday she'll be Mrs. Peter Norcot; and her son will be called Maurice Malherb and come hither as soon as he is weaned. If ever I meant anything in my life, I mean that."

"The way you order human destinies!"

"It is the province of the strong man so to do," he answered calmly. "My son cannot fill my shoes, because he has fallen for his country; but my grandson can and shall. The rest of them may be Norcot's; the first is mine."

"To count your grandchildren before they are born!" murmured Mrs. Malherb.

"No such thing at all. Go to sleep, and don't be foolish. I do not count them. That is Heaven's work. I merely reserve the eldest to myself. The action may not be usual, but that weighs very little with me. I speak in a spirit both scientific and religious; and it shall be so, if the Devil himself said 'No!' so there's an end on it."

He turned over, and in ten minutes snored; but for long hours Annabel watched the twinkling sky, and marvelled as to what manner of planet reigned in heaven and lighted earth at the moment when her husband first drew breath.