There was a pause; then she added suddenly--

"And if there were a hundred more men like you and Christopher, I should

love them all. But there are no more."

"You've got a big heart, Honor."

"Don't be unkind to me. It's a very unhappy heart."

"It should not be."

"That fact makes it so much the more unhappy."

"Do you know your own mind in this matter?"

"Of course I don't. Haven't you found that out?"

"It's going to snow," he said. "We'd better hurry."

"No, walk to the top of the hill; I like it."

"You must be made happy somehow," he continued. "It's everybody's duty

who loves you to make you that, if it can be done."

"You great, generous thing! How I wish I could do what you ask me to;

but I should be haunted if I did. You don't want a haunted wife, Myles?"

"Leave that. I have spoken and you have answered. I shall not speak

again, for I pay you the respect and honour to believe your 'No' means

no."

"Yes," she said; "you would." Then she turned away from him, for her

tears were near at last. "Every flake lies on the frozen ground. D'you

see how black the spotless snowflakes look against the sky? Isn't there

some moral or other to be got out of that, Myles?"

"Why did you let me buy half Endicott's?" he asked, not hearing her last

speech.

"Because you wanted to. And I wanted some money."

"Money!"

"Yes--I can tell you just at this moment. It will help to show you what

I am. I sent a thousand pounds to Christo."

"He'll never take it!"

"Of course not. Yet, somehow, it comforted me for quite two days to

send it."

"How we fool ourselves--we who think we stand firm! I fancied I was

getting to understand you, Honor, and I knew nothing."

"You'd know everything, and find that everything was nothing if you

weren't in love. There's nothing to know beyond the fact that I'm a

very foolish woman. Uncle Mark understands me best. He must do so, for

he can always make me angry, sometimes even ashamed."

Snow began to fall in earnest, and fluttered, tumbled, sidled, scurried

over the Moor. The wind caught it and swept it horizontally in tattered

curtains; the desolation grew from grey into white, from a spotted

aspect, still lined and seamed with darkness, into prevailing pallor.

The tors vanished; the distance was huddled from sight; Honor's

astrakhan hat caught the snow, and her habit also. She shook her head,

and shining drops fell from her veil. Then Myles went round to ride

between her and the weather, and they hastily trotted down the hill

homeward.

Already a mask of snow had played magic pranks with the world, reduced

known distances, distorted familiar outlines, brought remote objects

close, dwarfed the scene, and much diminished its true spaciousness. The

old familiar face of things was swallowed by a new white wilderness,

like in unlikeness to the earth it hid.

Early darkness closed down upon the land before tremendous snow. Within

the farm candles guttered, carpets billowed, cold draughts thrust chill

fingers down stone passages, and intermittent gusts of wind struck upon

the casement, like reverberations of a distant gun.

*CHAPTER XIV.*

*THE WISDOM OF DR. CLACK*

That night, despite the heavy snow, and not averse from a struggle with

the weather, Myles set out, after supper, for Little Silver,

three-quarters of a mile distant, in the valley beneath Bear Down.

Progress was difficult, but though snow already stood above Stapledon's

knees in the drifts, he found strength more than sufficient for the

battle, and presently brought a blast of cold air and a snow wreath into

the small dwelling of Doctor Clack, as he entered without formal

announcement. Courteney Clack--deeply immersed in packing for his

departure--marvelled at the advent of any visitor on such a night and

abandoned his labours.

"Get out of that coat and come to the fire," he said. "I'm afraid this

means something serious, or you wouldn't have turned out in such a

tempest. Who's ill, and what's amiss?"

"Nobody--nothing. I wanted this wild weather against my face to give me

a buffet. I also want a talk with you--if I can trespass on your time."

The physician was much relieved to learn that it would not be necessary

for him to go out of doors.

"I sail on Thursday," he said, "but, until that date, I am, as usual, at

the beck and call of all the world. Sit down and I'll get the necessary

ingredients. Need I say that I refer to a glass of punch?"

"In six weeks," began Myles abruptly, "you'll be seeing Christopher

Yeoland."

"God willing, that pleasure is in store for me."

Stapledon took out his pipe, and began to fill it mechanically.

"I want you to do a very delicate thing," he said. "The task will need

even all your tact and skill, doctor. Yet it happens that if I had to

pick a man out of England, I should have chosen you."

"Now that must be flattery--a mere country apothecary."

"No, it's true--for particular reasons. You are Yeoland's best friend."

"A proud privilege. I have his word for it."

"And, therefore, the man of all others to tackle him. Yet it's not to

your personal interest either. I'll be frank. That is only fair to

you. In the first place, what was the position between Miss Endicott

and your friend when he finally left here?"

"Well, Stapledon, I suppose you've the right to ask, if anybody has; and

not being blind, I can't speak the truth, perhaps, without hurting you.

The rupture was pretty complete, I fancy--final in fact. I didn't know

whether to be glad or sorry. Miss Honor is a girl who wants a tight

hand over her. I say it quite respectfully, for her good--and yours."

"Don't drag me in, Clack. The point is that she still loves Yeoland.

That's what I came here to explain to you. It is right that he should

know it, and you are the man to tell him. The information must come

from yourself, remember--from nobody else. The point is, how are you to

be furnished with proofs?"

"Are you sure there exist proofs? Is it true?"

"She told me so herself."

Doctor Clack had little difficulty in guessing at the nature of the

conversation wherein such a confession had made a part. He was

impulsive, and now did a thing that a moment's reflection had left

undone. He stretched out his hand and gripped Stapledon's.

"I'm sorry," he said. "You have my sincere sympathy. Forgive me if I

offend."

Myles flushed, and as the other had been surprised into sudden speech,

so now was he. Indeed he answered most unexpectedly, on the spur of the

moment, stung thereto by this assault on self-esteem.

"You mistake!" he answered. "She loves me also."

Doctor Clack whistled.

"How spacious! These times are really too cramped for such a girl.

This is the sort of knot that could be cut so easily in mediaeval days;

but now the problem is most difficult. You want to drop out of the

running in favour of Christo? Carlyle says that the heroic slumbers in

every heart. It woke in Yeoland's when he turned his back on Little

Silver and everything that made life worth living for him. Now it wakes

in you."

"I do not want her life to be made a lonely, wretched thing by any act

of mine."

"Of course not."

"We must save her from herself."

"Ah, that means that she has announced a determination not to marry at

all."

"Yes. We are both so much to her that she cannot marry either."

The doctor smothered a smile--not at Stapledon's speech, but before the

monumental sternness with which he uttered it.

"How characteristic!"

"Against that, however, I have the assurance that she does not know her

own mind. Women, I think, if I may say so without disrespect and upon

slight experience, are very contradictory. Miss Endicott has not been

in the habit of analysing her emotions. Not that she is not lucidity

itself. But--well, if he were here and I--if I were out of the way--I

only want her happiness. It seems to lie there. He must come back to

her. I can't say all I feel about this, but you understand."

"You're set on her happiness. Very altruistic and all the rest; but I'm

afraid she's not built for it. To get happiness into her life will be

difficult. Too humorous to be happy, don't you think? Omar al Khattab

remarks, very wisely, that four things come not back to man or woman.

They are the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the

neglected opportunity. She sent Yeoland about his business. Now there

is a sort of love that won't brook cruelty of that pattern."

"Cruelty's too big a word for it. She called it a lover's quarrel

herself. Eliminate me, and judge whether the spoken word might not be

retrieved and forgotten if he came back to her again."

"Of course improbability's the only certainty with a woman. Don't fancy

I'm letting my own interest stand in the way. I, too, in common with

all human clay, contain the germ of the heroical. I'll tell Christo

everything; that he still has half--is it half or a lesser or greater

fraction?--of Miss Honor Endicott's heart. Here we are--three

able-bodied men: you, Christo, and myself. Well, surely with a little

expenditure of brain tissue we can--eh? Of course. One of you chaps is

the obstacle to the other. You pull her heart different ways. She is

suspended between your negative and positive attractions like a

celestial body, or a donkey between two bundles of hay. So you both go

free. Now, if one of you heroes could only find comfort in another woman

such a circumstance might determine--you follow me?"

"Her happiness?"

"Not so much her happiness as her destination. Well, I'll urge upon

Yeoland the advisability of coming home; I'll tell him how things stand,

and of course keep you out of it."

"She would be happier with him than with me: that's the point."

"Say rather: that's the question. He may not think so. I don't want to

flatter you, but I don't think so myself. There is that in Christo not

usually associated with the domestic virtues. He and I are bachelors by

instinct--natural, unsophisticated beasts, in no sense educated up to

the desirable and blessed, but extremely artificial, state of matrimony.

You, on the contrary, are a highly trained creature with all your

emotions under your own control, and capable of a consistent

unselfishness in the affairs of life which is extremely rare in the male

animal. No; merely considered as a husband, Christo would not have a

look in with you--could hardly expect to get a vote--certainly not

mine."

"He might make a better husband for Honor."

"Not for any woman."

"Don't tell him so, if you think it."

"Leave me to do what I deem wise. Like you, I'm solely actuated with a

desire to brighten Miss Endicott's life. But you must not dictate my

line of action. My judgment is not wont to be at fault."

"I know that very well. This great cause is safe in your hands. Put it

first. Put it first, before everything. You can't feel as I do, and as

Yeoland must; but you're a man of very wide sympathy--that's to say a

man of genius more or less. And you're his first friend--Yeoland's, I

mean; so for his sake--and hers----"

"And yours--yes. I shall glory in bringing this matter to an

issue--happy for choice, but definite at any rate--if only to prove all

your compliments are not vain. Light your pipe and drink, and fill your

glass again."

"No more--perfect punch--perfect and very warming to the blood."

"Your punch-maker, like your poet, is born. The hereditary theory of

crime, you know."

"Now I must get up the hill. And thank you, Clack. You've lightened my

anxiety, I think. We shall meet again before you go?"

"Certainly--unless you are all snowed up at Bear Down. Good-night!

Gad! I hope nobody will want me! Not my weather at all."

The storm screamed out of the darkness. Beyond a narrow halo of light

from Courteney Clack's open door all was whirling snow and gloom; and

through it, his head down, Stapledon struggled slowly back to the farm.

The significance of his own position, the bitterness of his defeat, the

nature of his loss, and the gnawing sting of suffering had yet to come.

This effort to ameliorate the lonely life of Honor by bringing Yeoland

back into it was indeed laudable; but mere consciousness of right has no

power to diminish the force of great blows or obliterate the awful

meaning of a reverse in love. His future stretched desolate as the

weather before Myles Stapledon, and these physical exercises under the

storm, together with his attempts on behalf of others, might serve to

postpone, but could not diminish by one pang, the personal misery in

store for him.

*CHAPTER XV.*

*SUN DANCE*

On the morning of Easter Sunday, some three months after the departure

of Doctor Clack from Little Silver, certain labouring men in their best

broadcloth ascended Scor Hill at dawn. Jonah Cramphorn, Churdles Ash,

Henry Collins, and the lad Tommy Bates comprised this company, and their

purpose was to behold a spectacle familiar and famous in ancient days

but unheeded and little remembered at the period of these events. Ash

had attracted the younger men to see the sun dance on Easter morn, and

of those who accompanied him, Mr. Cramphorn was always willing to honour

a superstition, no matter of what colour; Collins came to gain private

ends; while the boy followed because he was promised a new experience.

"T'others may go to the Lard's Table for their bite an' sup, an' a holy

act to theer betterment no doubt," declared Churdles; "but, for my

paart, 'tis a finer deed to see the gert sun a-dancin' for sheer joy

'pon Resurrection Marnin', come it happen to be fine. A butivul day,

sure enough, an' the elements all red an' blue, like the Saviour's

clothes in the window-glasses to church."

Mr. Ash's dim eyes scanned the sweetness of an April sky, and the party

moved onward to the crown of the hill. Through pearly dews they went,

and passed forward where the soft, green mantle of on-coming spring hung

like a veil on hedgerows and over wild waste places. A world stretched

before them lighted by the cold purity of spotless dawn, and the

day-spring, begemmed with primrose stars, was heralded by thrushes in

many a dingle, by the lark on high. As yet earth lay in the light that

is neither sunshine nor shadow, but out of the waxing blue above, from

whence, like a shower, fell his tinkling rhapsody, one singing bird

could see the sun, and himself shone like a little star.

To the upland heath and granite plodded these repositories of

obsolescent folk-lore; and they talked as they went, the better to

instil Collins and the boy with a proper understanding in the matter of

those superstitions a scoffing generation agreed to disregard. Henry, on

his part, felt more than uneasy, for he much doubted the sanctity of

this present step. But love was responsible; Collins pined for Sally in

secret, and his great desire to conciliate Mr. Cramphorn was such that,

when Jonah invited him to the present observation, he undertook at once

to be of the party. Now he recollected that he had also promised the

vicar to go to the Sacrament that morning.

"You must knaw," said Churdles Ash to Tommy, "that this holy season be a

gert time for signs an' wonders up-along an' down-along. I tell 'e

these things, 'cause you'm a young youth, an' may profit an' hand 'em on

to your childern in fulness of time. Theer be Gude Friday--a day of

much vartue, I assure 'e. Not awnly the event o' the Lard's undoing by

they bowldacious Jews, but the properest for plantin' vegetables in the

whole of the year."

"An' the best for weanin' of childern," said Mr. Cramphorn. "Sally was

weaned 'pon that day, an' went straight to cow's milk so natural an'

easy as a born calf; an' look at her now!"

Mr. Collins sighed deeply.

"Butivulest gal in Debbensheer, I reckon," he said.

Jonah grunted assent, and Henry, feeling the moment for a certain vital

question had arrived, mopped his wet brow and tremulously approached the

matter.

"Fall back a pace or two, will 'e, maister? Your darter--I daresay you

might have seed as I was a bit hit in that quarter?"

"I've seed it, I grant you. I'm all eyes wheer my gals be consarned."

"These things caan't be helped. I mean no disrespect, I'm sure. 'Tis

the voice of nature in a man."

"I'm sorry for 'e, Henery."

"For that matter I couldn't wish myself out o' the evil, though 'tis

perplexin' an' very onrestful to my head. I be mazed when I consider how

a man of my modest way could think twice 'bout a rare piece like Sally.

Never seed such a wonnerful strong arm 'pon any woman in all my born

days."

Jonah frowned and shook his head.

"Never mind her paarts. Don't become you or any man to name a limb of

her separate from the rest. Baan't respectful!"

"Then I'm sorry I said it. An' as for respectfulness, I'd go on my

bended knees to her to-morrow."

"Have you?" inquired the parent. "That's the question. Have 'e axed

her an' got a answer?"

"Not for the world," stammered Henry. "Not for the world afore gettin'

your leave. I knaw my plaace better."

Mr. Cramphorn's nose wrinkled as though it had caught an evil odour.

"Bah! You say that! You'm so chicken-hearted that you come to me 'fore

you go to she! Then I sez 'No.' I forbids you to speak a word of the

matter, for I reckon your way be more tame an' soft than the likes of

her or any other high-spirited female would suffer."

"You'm tu violent--I swear you be," protested Mr. Collins. "You'd have

been the fust to blame me if I'd spoke wi'out axin' you. Besides,

caan't a man talk apart from usin' his tongue in this matter? I've a

looked at her time an' again wi' all the power of the eye. Theer's a

language in that, an' she knawed what I meant, or I'm a fule."

"Theer be such a language for sartain," admitted Jonah; "but not for

you. No more power o' speech in your gert eyes than a bullock's--I

don't mean as it's to be counted any fault in you, but just the will of

Nature. An' so enough's said."

"Quick! Run, the pair of 'e!" cried Tommy's voice. "Her's risin' nigh

the edge o' Kes Tor Rock all copper-red!"

Cramphorn quickened his pace, and Collins, now merged in blank despair,

strode alter him. Together they approached Mr. Ash, and joined the aged

man upon a little granite elevation at the south-eastern extremity of

Scor Hill. Below them, a watercourse, now touched to fire, wound about

the shoulder of the elevation; and beneath, much misty, new-born verdure

of silver birch and sallow, brightened the fringe of fir woods where

Teign tumbled singing to the morning.

Over against the watchers, lifted above a grey glimmer of ruined

Damnonian hut villages and primaeval pounds, there towered the granite

mass of Kes Tor, and from the distant horizon arose the sun. He bulked

enormous, through the violet hazes of nightly mist that now dwindled and

sank along the crowns of the hills; then the effulgent circle of him,

ascending, flashed forth clean fire that flamed along unnumbered crests

and pinnacles of far-flung granite, that reddened to the peaty heart

each marsh and mire, each ridge and plane of the many-tinted garment

that endued the Moor.

Silently the labourers watched sunrise; then was manifested that

heliacal phenomenon they had come to see. A play of light, proper to

the sun at ascension, ran and raced twinkling round his disc; and, like

an empyreal wheel, the blazing star appeared to revolve and spin upon

its upward way.

"He be dancin'! He be dancin', now!" declared Mr. Ash.

"For sure, if I could awnly keep the watter out o' my eyes," added

Jonah; while Collins, by his comment, reflected personal tribulations

and exhibited an impatient spirit in presence of this solemn display.

"I've seed un shimmer same as that scores o' times on working-days," he

said sourly.

"Granted--in a lesser fashion; but not like he be doin' now. He knaws

as the Lard o' Hosts leapt forth from the tomb to the biddin' of cherub

angels 'pon this glad marnin'--nobody knaws it better than him. An',

for all his size, he'm as giddy an' gay an' frolicsome by reason of it,

as the high hills what hop in the Psalms o' David."

Thus speaking, Gaffer Ash regarded the source of light with a benignant

and indulgent smile.

"An' us all did ought to feel the same, I'm sure," moralised Jonah

Cramphorn, wiping the tears from his eyes and blinking at a huge red

spot now stamped upon his retina and reproduced in varying size against

everything which he regarded. "For my part I hold that not a heathen in

the land but ought to rise into a gude Christian man afore that gert

act."

They waited and watched until the growing glory defied their vision;

then all started to return homewards, and both the elder men declared

themselves much refreshed, invigorated, and gladdened by what they had

seen. Each, inspired by the incident, occupied himself with time past

and matters now grown musty. They related stories of witches and of

ghosts; they handled omens, and callings, and messages from dead voices

heard upon dark nights; they explained the cryptic mysteries hidden in

hares and toads, in stars, in 'thunder-planets,' and the grasses of the

field. They treated of turning stones against an enemy; of amulets to

protect humanity from the evil eye; of ill-wishing and other magical

misfortunes; of oil of man; and of the good or sinister forces hidden in

wayside herbs.

"'Tis the fashion 'mongst our young school-gwaine fules to laugh at auld

saws an' dark sayings because theer teachers laugh at 'em; but facts

doan't change, though manners may," said Mr. Cramphorn. "Theer's

witches descended from Bible witches, same as theer be saints an'

'postles comed from laying on of hands. An' Cherry Grepe's of 'em; she

doan't want for power yet, or my brain be no better'n tallow. I seed

Chowne's oxen charmed into gude health again, an' gerter wonders than

that onder my awn eyes. Ten shillin' she had of mine--" he added,

lowering his voice for the ear of Mr. Ash alone--"ten shillin' to bring

harm 'pon Christopher Yeoland. An' she drawd a circle against un before

my faace an' done a charm wi' wax an' fire. ''Twill all act presently,'

she said; and act it did, as you knaw, for he'm crossed in love, an' a

wanderer 'pon the faace of the airth, like Cain at this minute; an'

worse to come, worse to come."

Mr. Ash looked very uneasy.

"I could wish as you hadn't told me that," he answered. "You'm allus

lickin' your lips on it, an' I'd rather not knaw no more. Ban't a

pleasant side o' your carater."

Shouts from Tommy interrupted Churdles, and all looked where the boy

pointed--to see some white object vanish under a gate before their eyes.

As for himself, heedless of Cramphorn's loud warning, Tommy Bates picked

up a stone and ran after the object.

"'Ful to me!" cried Cramphorn, "did 'e see it--a rabbit as I'm a sinful

man!"

"The white coney o' Scor Hill! An' that's death wi'in the year to some

wan us knaws! Fegs! A bad business for sartain."

"Death inside the week," corrected Jonah solemnly. "It may have

awvertook some poor neighbour a'ready."

"Or it may be ordained for wan of ourselves," murmured Mr. Ash gloomily.

"I wish to Christ I'd gone to church then!" burst out Collins. "For

it's been a cruel hard marnin' for me from time I rose, sun dance or no

sun dance; an' now to cap it wi' this gert, hidden calamity, an' death

in the wind."

"Sure as night follows day," declared Churdles Ash.

The love-sick Collins tramped on his way without further speech; Tommy

did not return from pursuit of the apparition, and Ash argued with

Cramphorn as to who might now be numbered with the majority. Upon this

delicate point they could by no means agree; and they were still

wrangling as to the identity of their ill-starred acquaintance when a

man met them hard by the main entrance of Bear Down, and they saw that

it was Myles Stapledon.

After Doctor Clack's departure and within a few days of the scene in

gathering snow upon Scor Hill, Myles had left Endicott's and taken him

rooms at Little Silver, in the dwelling of Noah Brimblecombe, sexton to

the parish. This man owned a pleasant abode somewhat greater than a

cottage--an establishment the bulk of which its possessor annually

under-let to advantage in the summer months. Hither came the rejected,

his plans for the future still unformed. And here he dwelt for three

long months and laboured like a giant to crush the agony of his spirit,

the black misery of every waking hour. Bear Down once thoroughly

invigorated by his capital and improved by his knowledge, he determined

to leave; but while work still remained to do he stopped at the gates of

the farm and exercised a painful self-control. Honor he saw not seldom,

but the former friendship, while still quite possible for her, was

beyond the power of the man. She pitied him, without wholly

understanding; and very sincerely pitied herself in that circumstances

now deprived her not a little of his cherished society. The difficulty

lay in her attitude towards him. To behave as one who loved him was

impossible under the constraint that now hedged him in; so she attempted

to imitate his manner, and failed. A great awkwardness and unreality

characterised present relations, and Honor found in these circumstances

ample matter for mental distraction, if only of a painful nature; while

Stapledon waited for the season of spring to finish his labours, and

counted that each post might bring some message from Christopher.

To-day he had news definite and tremendous enough The last of the

Yeolands was coming back to his fathers--that he might sleep amongst

them; for he was dead.

With a face darkened, Myles asked Cramphorn where he might find Mr.

Endicott, and Jonah, seeing that something was amiss, himself made an

inquiry.

"Maister Mark be in the garden most likely. An' what ill's walkin' now,

sir, if a man may ax? Theer's a black story in your faace as you caan't

hide."

"Black enough," said Stapledon shortly. "You'll know in good time."

He passed by and left them staring.

"That dratted white rabbit!" murmured Mr. Ash; while the messenger of

sorrow approached Mark, where he walked up and down under the walls of

the farm, beside uprising spikes of the orange-lilies and early growth

of other things that stood along his way.

"You, Stapledon? Good morning. There's the feel of fine weather on my

cheek."

Above them a window, set in cherry-buds, stood open, and within Honor,

who had just returned with her uncle from a celebration of the Lord's

Supper, was taking off her hat at her looking-glass.

"Good morning, uncle. I've brought some awfully sad and awfully sudden

news. Here's a letter from Clack. I rode early to Chagford about

another letter I expected, and found this waiting, so saved the postman.

Christopher Yeoland--he has gone--he is dead."

"Dead! So young--so full of life! What killed him?"

"Died of a snake-bite near Paramatta. It's an orange-growing district

near Sydney, so the doctor says. He was there with his cousin--an old

settler--a survivor from a cadet branch of the family, I fancy. And it

seems that it was Yeoland's wish to lie at home--his last wish."

"Then no doubt Clack will look to it. Gone! Hard to credit, very hard

to credit."

"I'm thinking of Honor. It will be your task to tell her, I fear. My

God! I can't believe this. I had hoped for something so different.

She loved him--she loved him still."

"Is there any reason why she should not read the letter?" asked Mr.

Endicott.

"None--not a line she need not see. It is very short--cynically short

for Clack. He was probably dazed when he wrote; as I am now."

"Give it to me, then. I will go up to her at once. Yes, I must tell

her--the sooner the better."

But Honor Endicott knew already. She had heard through her casement,

and stood like a stone woman staring up into the blue sky when Mark

knocked at her door.

"Come in, uncle," she said; and then continued, as he entered groping,

"I have heard what you want to say. So you are spared that. Give me the

letter and I will read it to you."

"You know!"

"My window was open. I could not choose but hear, for the first word

chained me. Christo is dead."

He held out the letter and left her with it; while she, as yet too

shocked to see or feel beyond the actual stroke, read tearlessly.

And, gazing with the eye of the mind through those great spaces that

separated her from this tragedy, she saw her old lover again, remembered

his joy of life, heard his laughter, and told herself that she had

killed him.

Below, in the kitchen, all Bear Down assembled about breakfast. Then

Mark Endicott told the company this news, and unutterable glances passed

between Ash, Cramphorn, and Collins.

"You'd best to keep dumb 'bout your share, Jonah," muttered Churdles

under his breath, with round eyes that indicated aversion. "I wouldn't

say the law mightn't overget 'e, if it knawed."

"As to that, I fear nothin', an' the tears I shed won't drown a midge,"

answered the other in a defiant whisper. "I've forgived his wrong;

forget it I never shall."

Collins was busy telling Sally and Margery of the spectral rabbit.

"An' 'tis plain the ill-convenient beast didn't run for nought. Who

shall laugh at such deeds now? Not the vainest man amongst us," he

concluded.

"Him of all to go!" sighed Mrs. Loveys; "an' when us thinks of what

might have been an' how one short word will make or mar a life----"

Then a question from Margery as to where Tom Bates might be was answered

by the sudden appearance of that youth, and Mrs. Loveys, with a mind

somewhat overwrought, found outlet for emotion in an attack upon him.

"Doan't 'e knaw the hour for eatin', you ugly li'l twoad?" she demanded

sharply. "An' to come to the table in such a jakes of a mess tu! You

ought to be shamed."

But the boy paid no heed. He returned breathless with a comforting

discovery, and now cried it aloud to his companions of the morning.

"'Tis all right," he said; "no call for no upstore nor trouble at all.

That theer white bastey I mean. I followed un half a mile to the furze

meadows down-long to make sartain, then I lost un, an' presently if I

didn't see un again--wi' a young rabbit he'd catched! Nought but that

baggerin' auld ram cat as they've got to Creber Farm!"

"Quiet! you young fule!" said Mr. Cramphorn roughly; "shut your mouth,

will 'e? or I'll scat 'e awver the ear-hole! You to pit your green

brains against our ripe wans! A man be dead, an' so 'tis sartain us

seed what us seed."

"Sartain as doom us seed what us seed," echoed Gaffer Ash, "for a man be

dead."

*CHAPTER XVI.*

*A SHELF OF SLATE*

A blackbird, with sleepy notes and sad, warbled in a green larch at

dawn; and the pathos proper to his immemorial song was well suited to

the scene. For the larch raised her lovely foliage, begemmed with

rubies, above many graves in the burying-place of Little Silver; and a

streamlet also murmured there, uttering a sort of purring harmony that

mingled with the contralto of the bird. From an ivy-tod, at hand in the

grave-yard hedge, bright eyes peeped and the mother, with head and tail

alone visible and sooty-brown body pressed close upon four eggs,

listened to her lord. Elsewhere a man also heard the music, but heeded

it not. He stood at his house door, yawned and sniffed the morning;

while his whitewashed walls that faced the east were warmed into a

glowing melon colour, and sunshine wove golden threads along the ancient

straw of the thatch above.

Noah Brimblecombe, the sexton, was a man of middle age, with grey

whiskers, clean-shaved lips and chin, a strong mouth, and a reflective

forehead. His back had grown rounded by digging of graves from early

manhood, and the nature of his life's labours appeared in a tinge of

gloom that marked his views. He passed through the world with an almost

morbid severity in his disparagement of all mundane concerns, triumphs

or possessions. The man now stood and fixed his small grey eyes upon

the church, but little more than a hundred yards distant. Then, bearing

great keys in one hand, an inch or two of candle in the other, he

proceeded to the burying-ground upon an errand connected with his

calling.

Little Silver is a hamlet of almost beggarly simplicity. In the midst

stands a trinity of three great buildings beneath the bosom of a hill;

certain ruined barns, with a few thatched cots and a pound, embrace the

remainder of the village; while a duck-pond outside the churchyard gate,

orchard lands sloping to the valleys beneath, a little winding road and

a stone wall, beside which grow yellow bullace plums, complete the

picture. Variety in form and wide divergence in point of age

characterise the central features of this spot. Paramount, by virtue of

years and pristine significance, stand the ruins of Little Silver

Castle; the church comes next--an erection of the customary moorland

pattern, with a ring of small, sweet-toned bells, and a crocketted

tower, something too tall for its breadth; while, between these two,

there stands an old-time manor-house--empty as the ruined castle at the

date of this narrative; but more recently repaired for habitation. Here

spread the familiar theatre of Mr. Brimblecombe's life. Every stone of

the old fourteenth-century castle was familiar to him, and he delighted

to take chance visitors of antiquarian taste upward by a winding stair

into the time-fretted, ivy-mantled abode of the lords of Little Silver.

Now the sky was its covering; the lancet windows, through which once

frowned war-like faces behind crossbow, matchlock, or petronel, were the

dwelling of a thousand soft green things and framed the innocent eyes of

wild flowers; in the upper chamber rowans stood rooted upon old

hearthstones; briar and many grasses, pellitory of the wall and blue

speedwells superseded bygone mural tapestries; and where antlers of the

red deer hung and brazen sconces for the torch aforetime sprang, there

now rose the fronds of hart's-tongue and shield ferns, with tangle of

woodbine and ivy and networks of rootlets that hid the mossy homes of

wrens. Beneath the ruin there still existed a dungeon-vault, gloomy and

granite-groined; yet, save for broken wall and stairway, perfect as when

poor wretches mouldered there at the mercy of their feudal masters. Now

not so much as one spectre of a vanished sufferer haunted the place;

only the bats passed their sleeping hours among the arches of the roof,

and hung from five-clawed hands, with sinister, wrapped wings--like

little dusky cherubim that worship with veiled faces at some

mystery-seat of evil.

Mr. Brimblecombe was not concerned with castle or with church at the

present time. His eye roamed forward to a ponderous mausoleum that lay

amid lush grasses and rank, sappy, umbelliferous plants in a corner of

the churchyard. A conical yew tree flanked each angle, and the larch,

whereon a blackbird sang, extended high overhead. Here stood the vault

of the Yeolands, and the last six generations of them slept within, for

no further accommodation existed under the church flags, where earlier

members of the race lay jowl to jowl with their historic enemies, the

Prouzes. The family tomb was of granite, with white marble tablets upon

three sides and a heavy metal door in the fourth or eastern face. Above

grinned decoration of a sort, and the architect, following sepulture

fashions at that date, had achieved a chaplet of marble skulls, which

Time was toying with from year to year. Now their foreheads, their

crowns, and occiputs were green and grimy; their eyes and jaws were

stuffed with moss; trailing toad-flax crept out of their noses; and

stray seeds, bird-planted, hung bright blossoms above them in

summer-time.

Hither came Brimblecombe, and his feet stamped over the graves of many

more dead than the mounds of the churchyard indicated. A young man, the

sexton's assistant, sat and smoked among the marble skulls, waiting for

his master there; and now he rose, put out his pipe, and gave Noah "Good

morning." A moment later the blackbird had fled with a string of sharp

ejaculations, for a harsh note grated upon the air as the sexton turned

his key in the Yeoland vault door. A flood of light from the risen sun

streamed in where, "sealed from the moth and the owl and the

flitter-mouse," lay the dead. A few giant woodlice rushed to

concealment before this shattering incursion of sunshine, and other

curling, crawling things made like haste to disappear. Then

Brimblecombe's blinking eyes accommodated themselves to the inner gloom.

Two ledges of slate lay on each side of the mortuary, and coffins, whose

nails had long turned green, poked head and feet from rotting palls upon

three of these. The place struck very cold, with a fungus smell. A few

puny fragments of asplenium found life amid the interspaces of the

stone-work and lived dismally in the dark where damp oozed and granite

sweated. The fourth ledge bore a coffin that held Christopher Yeoland's

father, and its pall had as yet resisted the decaying influences of this

gloomy spot, for only a few round circles of mould dimmed the lustre of

the velvet.

It was the custom of the family that the last four of their dead should

lie here upon these shelves; but now another needed his place and the

most ancient of the four--a matron who had flourished in the first

George's days--was to be deposed and lowered into the charnel below.

Brimblecombe moved an iron grating in the floor; then, with his

assistant's help, carried a slight and much tarnished shell to its place

in the ultimate desolation beneath.

"'Tis awful how the watter gains down here," declared Noah. "Small

wonder them ducks of Mother Libby's do graw to be so heavy. They gets

the very cream an' fatness of the churchyard into 'em, an' 'tis a'most a

cannibal act to eat 'em."

"'Tis lucky this here gen'leman's last of his race seemin'ly," said the

younger man, raising a candle above his head and spitting among the

coffins; "for theer ban't no more room to bury a beetle. Full up above

an' below by the look of it."

"Last of his line--'tis so--an' comed of gude havage[#] as ever a man

need to boast on. A poor end to such a high family. Just a worm

stinged un an' he'm falled into lifeless dust, no better than the

founder of the race. To think this heap o' rags an' bones be all that's

left of a mighty folk as was."

[#] Havage = ancestry.

"An' not a Yeoland left to carry on the name, they tell me."

"Not wan, Sam Reed; not a single bud left to bloom. Auld tree be dead of

sheer age, I reckon, for 'tis with families as with nations, as parson

said 'pon the Sunday after auld Jarvis died. They rise up gradual an'

slow to theer high-watter mark; then, gradual or fast, they tumble back

into the dust wheer they started. All dust--nations an' men like you

an' me--all draws our life an' power from dust--airth, or gold, or

grass, or what not. An' awnly lookin' 'pon the whole story of a man or a

family when 'tis told to the end, can you say wheer 'twas it reached the

high-watter mark an' measure the sum weight of the gude or bad to be set

against its name. Do you take me?"

Young Reed nodded.

"In paart I do," he said.

"Very well, then. Now I be gwaine to my meal."

Having made all ready for a new-comer, as yet upon the sea, Mr.

Brimblecombe locked up the Yeoland vault again. He then walked to a

rubbish heap at the back of the church behind the tower, there deposited

the rags of a pall taken from the coffin that he had just deposed, and

so returned home.

At his door stood Stapledon, smoking a pipe before breakfast; indeed of

late Myles had fallen much upon tobacco and the company of his horse and

dogs. But neither narcotic nor the trustful eyes of the dumb animals he

loved possessed power to lighten loads that now weighed upon his heart.

They lay beyond the alleviation of drug or the affectionate regard of

beasts. This sudden death had shocked him immeasurably, and in process

of time he began to accuse himself of it and saddle his conscience with

the self-same deed that Honor had instantly committed to her own account

on hearing the ill tidings. Stapledon felt that he was sole cause of

the disastrous catastrophe; that by blundering blindly into the united

lives of this woman and man he had destroyed the one and blackened all

the future days of the other. Before this spectacle, very real, very

bitter contrition and self-accusation overwhelmed him. And that the

lash fell vainly rendered its sting the greater. But he could not punish

himself adequately, and at length even remorse fainted before the sure

knowledge that Yeoland was beyond all reach of prayer or petition.

Stapledon's was not a nature that could grieve for long over an evil

beyond possibility of cure. In any sort of future he disbelieved; yet,

if such existed, then there might be time in it for Christopher Yeoland

to settle with him. Meanwhile, a living, suffering woman remained. He

thought without ceasing of Honor, he asked himself by how much this

event altered his duty with regard to her, and finally determined,

through turmoil of sleepless nights and much torture of the mind, to do

as he had already determined before this sad news came, and leave Bear

Down when certain buildings were completed and the new stock purchased.

For some weeks he had seen nothing of Honor, and purposely abstained

from seeking her. Concerning her, however, he had learnt from Sally

Cramphorn, who described how the mistress kept her room for two days

from Easter Sunday, how she had then reappeared, dressed in mourning,

and how that ever since she had spent most of her time with Mr.

Endicott, and preserved an unusual silence. For nearly three weeks

Honor did not pass beyond her garden; and this fact confirmed Stapledon

in a suspicion that she had so acted and avoided the land to escape from

sight of him. He felt such a desire natural in her, and only wondered

that she had not known him well enough to rest assured he would not seek

her or cross her path.

Then he learned that the girl was going from home for a while to visit

an aunt at Exeter; and, once assured of her departure, he hastened to

Bear Down and won a lengthy conversation with Mark Endicott. Women were

at work in the kitchen; so, setting down his needles and worsted, Mark

walked out of doors, took the arm Myles offered, and moved with him

slowly along the hillside. They spoke first of Christopher Yeoland.

"I can't believe it yet somehow. A man so full of life and

possibilities, with all the world before him to do some good in. A sad

death; a cruel death."

"As to that, I don't know," answered the elder. "He's out of earshot of

our opinions now, poor fellow; but I'm not ashamed to say behind his

back what I told him to his face more than once. Never a man played a

poorer game with his time. 'Tis the life of him looks sad and cruel to

me--not the death."

"So young as he was."

"What's that? Only a woman would be soft enough to mourn there.

'Tisn't the years of a man's life that matter, but the manner of living

'em. The length of the thread's no part of our labour--only the

spinning of it. He went--poor soul--but left no ball of yarn behind

him--nought but a tangle of broken ends and aimless beginnings. 'Tis

the moral sticking out of this I speak for--not to blame the man. God

knows I don't judge him unkindly. My youth was no better spent--maybe

not so well."

Stapledon's mind continued to be occupied by the former figure.

"The spinning--yes, the spinning," he said. "That's a true saying; for,

if you look at it, all life's much like a ropewalk, where we

toil--walking backwards--with our faces turned away from fate."

"Some are blind for choice--such as you," answered Mr. Endicott; "some

judge they've got the light; some hope they have; some know they have.

That last sort denies it to all but themselves, an' won't even let

another soul carry a different pattern candlestick to their own. But a

man may envy such high faith, for it's alive; it rounds the rough edges

of life; sets folk at peace with the prospect of their own eternity;

smooths the crumples in their deathbeds at the finish."

"I don't know. I've never heard that your thorough-paced believers make

a better end than other folks," Myles answered. "My small experience is

that they regard death with far more concern and dread than the

rudderless ones who believe the grave is the end."

"That's only to say a fear of death's nature-planted and goes down

deeper than dogma. Most makes of mind will always shrink from it, so

long as life's good to live. Faith is a priceless treasure, say what

you may, if a body has really got it. I'll maintain that so long as I

can talk and think. The man who pretends he has it, and has not,

carries his own punishment for that daily lie with him. For the Lord of

the Blessings never could abide pretence. Take Him or leave Him; but

don't play at being sheep of His fold for private ends. That's a game

deserves worse damnation than most human baseness."

"Yes, yes. Take Him as He is; and take what He brought, and be

thankful. Lord of the Blessings! Isn't that a title high enough? But

here's my thought and sure belief, uncle. The discovery called

Christianity depended on no man, no single advent of a prophet, or poet,

or saviour. It was a part of human nature always, a gold bred in the

very heart's core of humanity. And Christ's part was to find the gold

and bring it into the light. Burn your book; let the beautiful story

go. It is ruined, worm-eaten, riddled by the centuries and follies and

lies heaped upon it. Sweep your institutions all clean away and

Christianity remains, a sublime discovery, the glorious, highest known

possibility of man's mind towards goodness. Lord of the Blessings! What

dogma intrudes amongst them to blind and blight and make our hearts

ache? They are alive and eternal--as all that is true must be eternal.

They were waiting--hidden in human hearts--left for a man to discover,

not for a God to invent. Who cares for the old dead theories that

explained rainbows and precious stones, and the colour of a summer-clad

heath and the strength of the solid earth? We have the things

themselves. And so with the message of Christ."

"Wild man's talk," said Mark. "And quite out of your usual solid way of

thought. There's more hid in the Rock of Ages than a vein of gold

opened by a chance good man; but you and me won't argue on that, because

we're not built to convince each other. With years may come light;

Potter Time may mould a bit of faith into the fabric of even you

presently; who can tell? But spin slow and sure, as you mostly do--look

to the thread and see you leave no knot or kink behind as won't stand

the strain that life may call it to bear any moment."

"There's another thought rises from what you said; and I'll tell you why

I'm on that morbid tack in a moment. You declare the length of the

thread is out of our keeping, and that a mind will shrink naturally from

death so long as life is good. But how many a poor fool does determine

the length and cut the thread when life ceases to be good?"

"Determine the length they don't. They are the puppets, and when the

string is pulled they make their bow and go off the scene--by their own

hand, if it is to be."

"Humanity holds suicide a crime now. Once, I learn, it was not so.

Great heathen men destroyed themselves, yet do not lack marble statues

for it. Only yesterday, as one might say, a man was cut off and buried

at crossroads with a stake through his belly if he dared to die by his

own hand. The Church recognises no shades of meaning in this matter,

and so to-day, as often as not, a coroner's jury bleats out a solemn and

deliberate lie--so that a man shall be buried with the blessing of the

Church and rest in God's acre against the trump. But there's no greater

piece of solemn humbug than that eternal verdict."

"I thought much of these things when my eyes were put out. I have been

on the brink myself, but 'twas ordained my thread should run. A man

must be mad to destroy himself--mad or else a coward."

"Most times cowardly perhaps," answered Myles. "But to be a coward is

not to be a lunatic. Suicide is one of those matters we shut our eyes

about--one of the things we won't face and thresh out, because the

Church is so determined on the point. Not but a man may picture

circumstances when a self-death would be a great deed. You may lay down

your life for your friend in more ways than one. Such a thing can rise

to greatness or sink to contempt according to the mainspring of the

action. Some at least might think so, and that's why I'm on this

subject. I feel a shadowy fear sometimes that Christopher Yeoland might

have had some such fancy--would even have done such a crack-brained deed

for love of Honor. I bid his friend be very plain with him and explain

the gap that his going left in her life. I made it as clear as I had

power to. Honor distinctly told me that she still loved him too well to

marry any other man. That was all he had need to know, and I asked

Clack to make Yeoland return to her on the strength of her confession."

"And now he does."

"How might he have argued when you consider his great love for her? Is

it not possible that he thought so? Is it not possible that he said, 'I

am the obstacle. Let me go beyond reach, and Honor--who still feels that

nothing can wipe out our old understanding--will be in reality free?'

Might he not reason in that way?"

The old man shook his head.

"Not to the extent of blotting himself out by death. Had the cases been

reversed, I could almost picture you destroying yourself, since your

views are what they are. You might do it, worse luck--Yeoland never.

Besides, what necessity? Such a course would be merely like a stage

play under these circumstances."

"But there was an inclination towards just that in him; towards a

theatrical sort of way--unreal."

"You read him like that. But he wasn't so superficial as he seemed to a

man of your build of mind. You don't find Honor superficial? No--he

wouldn't kill himself, because the necessity wouldn't appear from his

point of view. As I say, you'd blunder into the act much sooner than

Yeoland."

"Not so at all. You misunderstand me."

"Well, at least you can't see what would be easier and pleasanter, and

answer the purpose just as well under our present civilisation.

Consider. How stands the problem if Yeoland married somebody else?

You'll find that meets the case at every point. I'm not belittling

Yeoland. Who knows what chances of greatness there may have been hidden

and lost in him? Life only calls into play a thousandth part of any

man's powers during his brief tale of days, and most of us die full of

possibilities unguessed even by ourselves, because the hazard never

rose; but Yeoland's greatness, if greatness he had, would not have led

him off the stage by that road. He didn't die willingly, I promise you.

Come back he might have upon your message, if he had lived; or married

he might have, even out of consideration for Honor's future. We'll

allow him all the credit belonging to possibilities. Meantime, the only

thing that we know beyond his death is a last wish expressed to Clack--a

wish quite in keeping with his character."

"To be brought home again."

"Yes, the desire to rest his bones in Little Silver. Struck for death,

the thought in his mind was not death, nor Honor, nor you. His love for

the grass and the trees and the earth of his mother-land woke in him;

dying, his heart turned to Godleigh and his own old roof-tree. The

picture of the place was the last on his brain when all things were

fading away."

The other bowed his head; then he asked concerning Honor.

"It's hit her hard," answered Mark Endicott. "This sudden end of him

has been a burnish on the glass of memory--polished it very bright. She

has lived through the summer weather with him and talked fitfully of

woodland walks by him, and chatter of birds, and shining of Teign, and

cutting of letters on tree trunks. The glow and glory of love slowly

growing in them--sad enough to look back on for those that love her."

"Sad enough. And my share of the pain's all too light."

"Who knows how much or how little you deserve? You were sent to play

your part in her life. Just a bit of the machine.

Change--change--change--that's the eternal law that twists the wheel and

opens the womb; digs the grave and frets the name off the tombstone;

gnaws away the stars; cools the sun in heaven and the first love of a

young maid's heart. You brought something new into her life--for better

or for worse. Something new and something true, as I think; but maybe

truth's not always the right medicine at all hours. Anyhow change will

work its own way with time and space and the things that belong to them.

She was torn in half between you, and brave enough to make naked

confession of it. That proclaimed her either a greater character than

we thought once, or a poorer thing every way--according to the mind that

views the case."

"I didn't know such a tangle could happen."

"Every sort of tangle can happen where men and women are concerned. Not

that she's not a puzzle to me, too, every hour. She has gone now for a

while to Exeter. I advised that she should bide there until after the

funeral, but she scorned the thought. 'I'm chief mourner in truth, if

not in name,' she said; and so she will be. Time must do the rest."

"The last resource of the wretched."

"And the best to be relied on."

"I can only hope to God she's not to be unhappy for ever."

"She gets her happiness, like a bee gets honey--here, there, everywhere,

by fits and snatches. Too quick to see the inner comedy of human

affairs to be unhappy for ever, or happy for long. And what are you

going to do, Myles?"

"I thought to go for good--yes, for good this time."

"Couldn't do better. She will read you into these chapters of her life.

Can't help it. But Time's on your side too, though you slight him. And

this, at least, you'll remember: if she wants you to come back, she

won't hesitate to let you know it."

*CHAPTER XVII.*

*SPRING ON SCOR HILL*

Often it happens that small matters demand lengthy spaces in time for

their development, while affairs of import and interests involving high

changes are carried through at comet speed upon the crest of some few

splendid or terrible moments. Thus did concerns of note to those

playing a part of their history under our eyes tumble unexpectedly to

the top, and an event take place wholly unforeseen by Myles Stapledon,

though predicted and prophesied for a more or less remote future by

Uncle Endicott. For this surprise one woman was responsible.

Honor returned from Exeter in time to be present at Christopher

Yeoland's funeral; and with her she bore a fair wreath of Eucharis

lilies, which Mr. Brimblecombe consigned to a rubbish heap behind the

church tower as soon as her back was turned, because he held flowers out

of place on the coffin of quality. Those now occupying Godleigh for a

term of years gladly allowed the recent possessor to pass his last night

among men beneath that roof, and not a few folk representative of the

district attended the obsequies in person or by proxy. So Christopher

Yeoland was laid upon his shelf of slate, and Doctor Courteney Clack,

for the benefit of such as cared to listen, told how a whip snake,

falling from a tree, had fastened upon the dead man's neck, and how,

with few words and one wish to be buried at home, he had quickly passed

away under the poison.

So that chapter closed at the mausoleum, whose guardian cherubs were

moss-grown skulls; and day followed day, month succeeded upon month,

into the time of early summer; of misty silver nights and shining noons;

of warm rain and steaming fields; of the music of life from birds'

throats; of the scent of life in the chalices of bluebells; of the very

heart-beat and pulse of life under the glades of green woods and beside

the banks of Teign.

Then, in a June day's shape, Time, of many disguises, began his work

with Honor Endicott. A revulsion followed the gloom that had passed and

pressed upon her; she mourned still, but for choice in the sunshine;

and, growing suddenly athirst for the river and the manifold life that

dwelt upon the brink of it, she took her rod as an excuse, passed upward

alone, descended Scor Hill, and pursued her way eastward to a lonely

glen where Teign winds into the woods of Godleigh. Many fair things

broke bud about her, and in secret places the splendour of summer made

ready. Soon the heather would illuminate these wastes and the foxgloves

carry like colour aloft on countless steeples of purple bells; soon

woodbine and briar would wreathe the granite, and little pearly clusters

of blossom spring aloft from the red sundews in the marsh; while the

king fern already spread his wide fronds above the home of the trout,

and the brake fern slowly wove his particular green into the coombs and

hills.

Despite a sure conviction that melancholy must henceforth encompass her

every waking hour, Honor Endicott was not armed against the magic of

this blue and golden day. She could fish with a fly, and that

skilfully; and now, before the fact that a brisk rise dimpled and

dappled the river, passing temptations to kill a trout wakened and were

not repulsed. She set up her rod, and by chance mused as she did so

upon Myles Stapledon. Him she had not seen for many days, but her

regard had not diminished before his abstention. Indeed she appreciated

it up to a point, though now it began to irk her. She did not know that

he was about to depart definitely; for Mark Endicott had deemed it

unnecessary to mention the fact.

At her third cast Honor got a good rise, and hooked a fish which began

its battle for life with two rushes that had done honour to a heavier

trout. Then it leapt out of the water, showed itself to be a

half-pounder or thereabout, and headed up stream with a dozen frantic

devices to foul the line in snag or weed. But Honor was mistress of the

situation, turned the fish with the current, and, keeping on the deadly

strain, soon wearied it. Then she wound in the line steadily, steered

her victim to a little shelving backwater, and so, having no net, lifted

the trout very gently out of its element on to the grass. Flushed with

excitement, and feeling, almost against her will, that she was young,

Honor gazed down upon gasping fario, admired the clean bulk of him, his

fierce eye, dark olive back spotted with ebony and ruby, the lemon light

along his plump sides, his silver belly, perfect proportions, and sweet

smell. He heaved, opened his gills, sucked deep at the empty air, and

protested at this slow drowning with a leap and quiver of suffering;

whereupon, suddenly moved at thought of what this trout had done for

her, Honor picked him up and put him back into the water, laughing to

herself and at herself the while. After a gulp or two, strength

returned to the fish, and like an arrow, leaving a long ripple over the

shallow, he vanished back to the deep sweet water and his own sweet

life.

Other trout were not so fortunate, however, and by noon, at which time

all rise ceased, the angler had slain above half a dozen and was weary

of slaughter. She fished up stream, and had now reached the tolmen--a

great perforated stone that lies in the bed of Teign near Wallabrook's

confluence with it. And resting here awhile, she saw the figure of

Myles Stapledon as he approached the river from a farm on the other

side. The homestead of Batworthy, where it nestles upon the confines of

the central waste, and peeps, with fair silver thatches, above its

proper grove, shall be seen surrounded by heather and granite. The

river babbles at its feet, and on every side extends Dartmoor to the

high tors--north, south, and west. From hence came Myles Stapledon,

after gathering certain information from a kindly colleague; and now he

strode across the stream and on to within ten yards of Honor, yet failed

to see her, where she sat motionless half hidden by ferns and grasses.

He moved along, deep plunged in his own thoughts, and she determined to

let him pass, until something in the weary, haggard look of him tempted

her to change her mind. He was lonely--lonelier than she; he had nobody

to care about him, and all his life to be lived. Perhaps, despite these

sentimental thoughts, she had suffered him to go, but one circumstance

decided her: on the arm of his workaday coat appeared a band of black.

And, guessing something of his recent tribulations, she lifted her voice

and called him.

"Myles! Why do you avoid me?"

He started and slipped a foot, but recovered instantly, turned, and

approached her. His face betokened surprise and other emotion.

"How good of you to call me--how kind. I did not know that you were out

on the Moor, or within a mile of this place. Else I would have gone

back another way."

"That's not very friendly, I think. I don't bite."

"I thought--but like all thoughts of mine, though I've wasted hours on

it, nothing was bred from it. At least I may accompany you back. It

was most kind to call me. And most strange and culpable of me not to

see you."

She noticed his gratitude, and it touched her a little.

"I've killed eight trout," she said; "one nearly three-quarters of a

pound."

"A grand fish. I will carry them for you. Fine weather to-day and the

summer really at the door."

"It was thoughtful of you to keep away, Myles. I appreciated that."

"I should have gone clean and haunted the land no further; but there was

much to do. Now all is done, and I'm glad of this chance to tell you

so. I can really depart now. You'll think it a cry of 'Wolf!' and

doubt my strength to turn my back on Bear Down again; but go I must at

last."

She was reflecting with lightning rapidity. That he meant what he said

she did not doubt. The news, indeed, was hardly unexpected; yet it came

too suddenly for her peace of mind. There existed a side to this action

in which she had an interest. Indeed with her might lie the entire

future of him, if she willed it so. Decisions now cried to be made, and

while even that morning they had looked afar off, vague, nebulous as

need be, now they rushed up from the horizon of the future to the very

zenith of the present. Yet she could not decide thus instantly, so

temporised and asked idle questions to gain time.

"Of what were you thinking when I saw you cross the river with your head

so low?" she asked, and hoped that his answer might help her. But

nothing was further from his mind than the matter in hers. He answered

baldly--

"My head was bent that I might see my way on the stepping-stones. As to

my thoughts, I only had a muddled idea about the season and the green

things--friends and foes--all growing together at the beginning of the

race--all full of youth and sap and trust--so to speak; and none seeing

any danger in the embrace of his companion. Look at that pest, the

beautiful bindweed. It breaks out of the earth with slender fingers,

weak as a baby's, yet it grows into a cruel, soft, choking thing of a

thousand hands--more dangerous to its neighbour than tiger to man--a

garotter, a Thug, a traitor that hangs out lovely bells and twines its

death into fair festoons that it may hide the corpse of its own

strangling."

"And then?"

"That was all my thought. Yet I seemed to feel akin to the plant

myself."

"Something has changed you since we dropped out of one another's lives.

Fancy a practical farmer mooning over such nonsense! Bindweed can be

pulled up and burnt--even if it's growing in your heart."

"How like you to say that! It is good to me to hear your voice again,

Honor."

"Take down my rod then, and tell me why you are going. Half of

Endicott's is your own."

"I thought--I believed that you would be happier if I did so. And I

still suspect that is the case. I owe you deeper reparation than ever a

man owed a woman."

"You are too good, but your goodness becomes morbid."

"I'm only a clumsy fool, and never knew how clumsy or how much a fool

until I met you."

"No, I say you are really good. Goodness is a matter of temperament,

not morals. Some of the most God-fearing, church-going people I know

can't be good; some of the worst people I ever heard about--even frank

heathens like yourself--can't be bad. There's a paradox for you to

preach about!"

But he shook his head.

"Your mind's too quick for me. Yet I think I know what you mean. By

'goodness' and 'badness' you signify a nature sympathetic or otherwise.

It's all a question of selfishness at bottom."

"But the day looks too beautiful for such talk," answered Honor.

"So it is; I don't desire to talk of anything. You can't guess what it

is to me to hear your voice again--just the music of it. It intoxicates

me, like drink."

"You're dreaming; and, besides, you're going away."

The light died out of his face, and they walked together in silence a

few paces. Then the girl's mind established itself, and her love was a

large factor in that decision, though not the only one. She determined

upon a course of action beyond measure unconventional, but that aspect

of the deed weighed most lightly with her.

They were passing over the face of Scor Hill when she turned to the

left, where stood that ancient monument of the past named Scor Hill

Circle.

"I'm going down to the old ring," she said; "I've a fancy to visit it."

He followed without speech, his mind occupied by a frosty picture of

their last visit to the same spot. Now it basked under sunlight, and

spring had touched both the splinters of granite and the lonely theatre

in which they stood. Upon the weathered planes of the stones were

chased quaint patterns and beads of moss, together with those mystic

creatures of ochre and ebony, grey and gold, that suck life from air and

adamant and clothe the dry bones of Earth with old Time's livery.

Upon a fallen stone in the midst, where young heather sprouted in tufts

and cushions, Honor sat down awhile; and seeing that she remained

silent, Myles uttered some platitudes concerning the spot and the

ceremonies of heathen ritual, state, or sacrifice that had aforetime

marked it. The upright stones surrounded them where they sat beside a

sort of central altar of fading furze. The giant block of the circle

stood on the north of its circumference, and upon more than one of the

unshaped masses were spots rubbed clean by beasts and holding amid their

incrustations red hairs of cattle, or flecks of wool from the fleeces of

the flocks. Even now a heifer grazed upon the grass within the circle;

its herd roamed below; round about the valley rose old familiar tors;

while sleepy summer haze stole hither and thither upon the crowns of

Watern and Steeperton, and dimmed the huge bulk of Cosdon Beacon where

it swelled towards the north.

"When did we last come here?" began Honor suddenly.

"On the day of the snowstorm."

"Ah, yes. We were riding, and stopped a moment here. Why?"

Stapledon looked at her, then turned his head away.

"If you have forgotten, it is good," he said.

"What did I say to that great question, Myles?"

"Spare me that, Honor. I have been punished enough."

"Don't generalise. What did I say?"

"That you could marry neither of us--neither Yeoland nor me--out of

consideration for the other."

"And you gasped when you heard it; and I kept my word. Now the pity is

that you must keep yours."

"Mine?"

"Never to ask again what I would not give then."

"Honor!"

"Hush. Don't break your word for such a trifle as a wife. I'm

accustomed to doing unmaidenly, horrible things, so this doesn't hurt me

as much as it would a proper-thinking, proper-feeling woman. I love

you; I always have loved you since I knew you. And I suppose you love

me still--more or less. He who has gone--has gone. There will never be

another Christo for me, Myles. You cannot take his place; and if you

were dead and he was alive, he could never have taken yours. That's my

peculiarly deranged attitude. But here I sit, and I should like to be

your wife, because life is short and a woman's a fool to throw away good

love and starve herself when plenty is offered."

Stapledon's dog looked up from his seat on the heather, barked and

wagged his tail, knowing that his master was happy; and the heifer,

startled by these canine expressions of delight and sudden ejaculations

uttered aloud in a man's deep voice, flung up her hind legs wildly and

cutting cumbrous capers, to indicate that she too appreciated the

romance of the moment, shambled away from the grey circle to join her

companions in the valley below.

*CHAPTER XVIII.*

*ROSES AND ROSETTES*

"Us'll go down-long awver the plough-path; then us'll be in full time to

see the butivul bride arrive," said Tommy Bates. He stood in Sunday

attire among his betters, and the sobriety of much black broadcloth was

brightened by unusual adornment, for Cramphorn, Ash, Collins, Pinsent,

and the rest were decorated with large rosettes of satin ribbon. Many

also wore roses in their buttonholes, for one of Stapledon's few friends

was a big rose-grower at Torquay, who, from the abundance of his scented

acres, had despatched countless blooms--crimson and cream, snow-white,

ivory and orange-yellow, pink and regal purple--to brighten a glorious

day.

But in the judgment of Ash and the elders no flower of cultivation could

compare in significance or beauty with the sham sprigs of orange-blossom

at the centre of the rosettes. Churdles himself also carried a bulky

parcel in the tail of his coat, which added another protuberance to his

gnarled form. It was not a prayer-book, as he gave Collins to

understand with many nods and winks.

The party stood upon the grass plot before Bear Down--a space separated

from the main great grass lands of the farm. These latter subtended the

level ground and swelled and billowed under waves of colourless light

that raced free as the wind over another year's hay harvest. Far

beneath, just visible above a green hedge between elms, four small peaks

arose and a White Ensign fluttered from a flagstaff in the midst, where

stood the village church.

Mr. Cramphorn and his friends set forth and improved the occasion with

reflections upon what would follow the wedding, rather than in much

consideration of the ceremony itself.

"They be gwaine straight off from the church door," said Mr. Ash, "an'

so they'll miss the fun of the fair up-long, though 'tis theer money

as'll furnish the junketings. A braave rally of neighbours comin' to

eat an' drink an' be merry by all accounts; an' not a stroke more'n

milkin' cows an' feedin' things to be done to-day by man or woman."

"They ought to bide to the eating whether or no," said Mr. Cramphorn.

"An' I be gwaine to tell a speech, though they'll be half ways to Exeter

before I does. I hold it my duty. She'm the best mistress an' kindest

woman in the world to my knawledge, an' my gift o' words shan't be

denied at her solemn weddin' feast, whether she be theer or whether she

han't."

Mr. Collins applauded these sentiments, for his private ambitions were

strong at heart under the rosy atmosphere of the hour.

"I lay you'll tell some gude talk come bimebye," he said. "'Tis a gert

power--same as the gift of tongues in the Bible seemin'ly."

"Theer'll be some plum drinkin' by all accounts," said Mr. Ash, pouting

up his little wrinkled mouth in cheerful anticipation. "Brown sherry

wine for us, an' fizzy yellow champagne an' auld black port for the

quality. An' it's a secret hope of mine, if I ban't tu bowldacious in

thinkin' such a thing, as I may get a thimbleful of the auld

wine--port--so dark as porter but butivul clear wi' it, an' a sure

finder of a man's heart-strings. I be awful set upon a sup of that.

I've longed for fifty years to taste it, if so be I might wi'out

offence. It have been my gert hope for generations; an' if it awnly

comes 'pon my death-bed I'll thank the giver, though 'twould be a

pleasanter thing to drink it in health."

"I seed larder essterday," said Tommy Bates. "My stars! The auld

worm-eaten shelves of un be fairly bent."

"Purty eating, no doubt," assented Cramphorn, though as one superior to

such things.

"Ess fay! Fantastic pastry, more like to cloam ornaments for the

mantelshelf than belly-timber. God knaws how they'll scat 'em apart."

"Each has its proper way of bein' broke up," said Mr. Cramphorn.

"Theer's manners an' customs in all this. Some you takes a knife to,

some a fork, some a spoon. The bettermost takes a knife even to a apple

or pear."

"Things a lookin' out o' jellies, an' smothered in sugar an' transparent

stuff! I'd so easy tell the stars as give a name to half of 'em. But

theer was a pineapple--I knawed un by seein' his picksher in the auld

Bible, where Joseph was givin' his brothers a spread. But they didn't

have no such pies an' red lobsters as be waitin' up-long. Such a huge

gert cake 'tis! All snow-white, an' crawled awver wi' silver paper, an'

a li'l naked doll 'pon top wi' blue eyes an' gawld wings to un. A pixy

doll you might say."

"Her ought to bide an' cut that cake herself, not dash away from church

as though she'd done murder 'stead of praiseworthy matrimony," grumbled

Mr. Cramphorn. "'Tis defying the laws of marryin' and givin' in

marriage. Theer may be trouble to it presently."

"If they'm both of a mind, they'll do what they please," said Collins.

"Ay, an' 'twon't hurt none of us, nor make the vittles an' drinks less

sweet," declared Samuel Pinsent.

"That's truth," assented Gaffer Ash; "an' when you come to be my ripe

years, Jonah, you'll go limpin' to meet the li'l pleasures that be left

to 'e half-way, 'stead of fearin' evil. As for the pains--fegs! they

meets you half-way!"

"'Twill be a happy marriage, I should reckon," ventured Pinsent.

"We'll pray it will be, though he'm a thought tu deep in love for my

money," declared Cramphorn.

"Can a man love his maiden more'n enough?" asked Henry Collins in

amazement; and the other answered that it might be so.

"Love be well knawn for a mole-blind state, Henery--a trick of Nature to

gain her awn ends; an' the sooner new-fledged man an' wife see straight

again better for their awn peace of mind. Maister Myles be a shade

silly here and theer, though Lard knaws if ever a man's to be forgiven

for gettin' his head turned 'tis him. A marvellous faace an' shape to

her. But ban't the wise way to dote. She'm a human woman, without

disrespect; and her sawl's to save like poorer folk. In plain English,

he'll spoil her."

"Couldn't--no man could," said Mr. Ash stoutly. "To think of a sovereign

to each of us, an' two to me by reason of my ancient sarvice!"

"You've toiled 'pon the land for a fearsome number of years, I s'pose,

Maister Ash?" asked Tommy respectfully.

"Me? I was doin' man's work in the reign of the Fourth Gearge. I've

ate many an' many a loaf o' barley bread, I have; an' seed folks ride

pillion; an' had a woman behind me, on the auld-fashion saddles, myself,

for that matter. An', as for marriage, though I never used it, I've

seed scores o' dozens o' marriages--sweet an' sour. Marriages be like

bwoys playin' leapfrog, wheer each lad have got to rucksey down in turn;

an' so man an' wife have got to rucksey down wan to t'other at proper

times an' seasons. Each must knaw theer awn plaace in the house; an'

Mrs. Loveys was right, when us gived 'em the cannel-sticks for a gift.

You call home how she said, 'I wish 'e patience wan wi' t'other, my

dearies, 'cause theer ban't nothin' more useful or more like to be

wanted 'bout the house o' newly married folk than that!'"

The party now mingled with those already assembled in Little Silver. A

crowd drawn from Throwley, Chagford, and elsewhere stood and admired

flags that waved between green-garlanded poles at the churchyard gate.

Many passed from the hot sunshine into the shadow of the holy building;

many had already entered it.

"Us'll bide here till our brows be cool an' she've a-come. Then us'll

go in an' sit usual plaace, left side o' the alley," said Mr. Cramphorn.

Presently Myles Stapledon appeared, and a hum of friendship rose for

him. He looked somewhat anxious, was clad in a grey suit, white

waistcoat, and a white tie with his solitary jewel in it--an old

carbuncle set in gold that had belonged to his father and adorned that

gentleman's throat or finger on the occasion of his marriage. In the

bridegroom's buttonhole was a red rosebud, and now and again his hand

went nervously across to an inner pocket, where reposed the money for

the honeymoon. He walked to the vestry, made certain entries in the book

spread open for him, and presented Mr. Scobell with two guineas. He

then entered a choir stall and sat down there, facing the eyes of the

increasing company without visible emotion.

Outside came stroke of horse-hoofs and grinding of wheels. Then entered

an ancient aunt of the bridegroom's with her two elderly daughters. A

second carriage held Honor's relatives from Exeter, and a third

contained Mrs. Loveys and Sally and Margaret Cramphorn; for it was

Honor's wish that her serving-maids should be her bridesmaids also, and

she knew none of her sex who loved her better. Each had a bouquet of

roses; each wore a new dress and now waited at the entrance for their

mistress, with many a turn and twist, perk of head, and soft rustle from

the new gowns. The eyes of Mr. Collins watered as he beheld Sally, and

his huge breast rose, heaved up by mountainous sighs. Meantime, she had

secretly handed a rosette to Mr. Greg Libby, who, in company of his old

mother, adorned the gathering; and Margery too, at the first

opportunity, presented the young man with a rosette. Thus it came about

that Gregory gloried in dual favours and attached both to his marriage

garment; whereupon two maiden hearts under dove-coloured raiment were

filled with emotions most unsisterly, and all men, save one, laughed at

the luck of the gilded hedge-tacker.

The glory of Little Silver church centres in an ancient screen of many

colours. Upon it shall be found elaborate interlacing of blue and gold,

pale blue and dark crimson; while through the arches of it may be seen

the Lord's Table under a granite reredos. Pulpit and lectern are also

of the good grey stone, and to-day a riot of roses that made the little

place of worship very sweet climbed the old pillars and clustered in the

deep embrasures of the windows. The walls, painted with red distemper,

ascended to a waggon roof; and upon pews, where the humble living stood

or knelt above dust of noble dead, frank daylight entered through plain

glass windows.

Along the base of the ornate screen stood figures of the saints

mechanically rendered, and about one, standing upon the right hand of

the choir entrance, there twined a text that indicated this figure stood

for John the Baptist. "The voice of one crying in the wilderness" were

those graven words; and now by chance they caught a pair of downcast

eyes, as Honor Endicott bent her young head and passed onward from

independence into the keeping of a man.

She came with her uncle, and those in church rose amid mighty rustlings

and clink of iron-shod boots, and those outside crowded into their

places. A little harmonium groaned gallantly, and Mr. Scobell billowed

up the aisle from the vestry. Honor walked to meet Myles with her hand

holding Mark Endicott's. At the steps, under the screen, she stopped

for him to feel the step, and as she did so caught sight of the text.

Then a big, florid face, with the plainest admiration exhibited upon it,

met her gaze, and she also became dimly conscious of a tall, grey man at

her right elbow. The florid face belonged to Mr. Scobell, who,

recollecting himself and chastening his features, frowned at the back of

the church, and began the ceremony. But the grey man was waiting for

her, longing for her, "to have and to hold from this day forward, for

better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to

love and to cherish," until death should part them.

Yet the text--that voice in the wilderness--haunted her mind all the

while, as it is the way with irrelevant ideas to intrude upon high

moments. Presently Honor put her hand into her husband's, felt the gold

slip over her finger, and marvelled to feel how much heavier this ring

was than the little toy of diamond and pearl she had been wearing of

late. Then all was accomplished, and Mr. Ash and his friends quite

drowned the squeak and gasp of a Wedding March, with which the vicar's

daughter wrestled upon the harmonium; for they all clattered out of

church and drew up in a double line outside along the pathway. Churdles

then produced his mysterious packet and exhibited a bag of rice. This

was opened, and old, tremulous hands, knotted and veined like ivy-vines

upon an oak, flung the grain as lustily as young plump ones, while man

and wife came forth to face the benignant shower.

At the gate two stout greys and an old postillion--relic of days

flown--were waiting to take Myles and his lady to Okehampton for the

London train. Mark Endicott, led by Tommy Bates, stood at the carriage

door; and now he felt warm lips on his blind face and a tear there.

"Be a good uncle," whispered Honor; "and don't weary your dear hands too

much for those Brixham fishermen. Home we shall come again in a month;

and how I'm going to do without you for so long, or you without me, I

can't guess."

He squeezed her hands, and for once the old Spartan was dumb.

"God bless 'e!"

"Long life an' happiness to 'e!"

"Good luck to the both of 'e!"

Then a jumble and buzz of many speaking together; lifting of voices into

a cheer; a gap in the road, where the carriage had stood; a puff of dust

at the corner by the old pound; and courageous fowls, clucking and

fluttering and risking their lives for scattered rice, among crushed

roses and the legs of the people.

The bells rang out; the dust died down; personages drove slowly up the

hill to the banquet; certain persons walked up. Mr. Cramphorn, fearful

of a love contagion in the air, convoyed his daughters home himself, and

Libby, growing faint-hearted before the expression on Jonah's face,

abandoned his design of walking by Sally's side for half the distance

and with Margery for the rest. Henry Collins was also deprived of the

society he craved, and by ill-fortune it chanced that Ash, Pinsent, and

the two rivals found themselves in company on the journey home. Collins

thereupon relieved his wounded soul by being extremely rude, and he

began with a personal remark at the expense of Gregory's best coat and

emerald tie.

"All black an' green, I see--mourning for the devil that is," he said,

in a tone not friendly.

"Aw! Be he dead then?" inquired Mr. Libby with great show of interest.

"Not while the likes of you's stirrin'. An' what for do 'e want to make

a doomshaw of yourself--wearin' two rosettes, like a Merry Andrew, when

other men have but wan?"

"Grapes are sour with you, I reckon, Henery. You see I puts this here

left bow just awver my 'eart, 'cause Sally Cramphorn gived it to me."

Collins blazed into a fiery red, and a fist of huge proportions clenched

until the knuckles grew white.

"Have a care," he said, "or I'll hit 'e awver the jaw! Such a poor

penn'orth as you to set two such gals as them by the ears!"

"Who be you to threaten your betters? You forget as I'm a man wi' money

in the bank, an' you ban't."

"Ah, so I did then," confessed Collins frankly. "I did forget; but they

didn't. Keep your rosettes. 'Tis your gert store o' money winned

'em--same as bullock, not farmer, gets the ribbons at Christmas fair.

So, every way, it's dam little as you've got to be proud of!"

Mr. Libby became inarticulate before this insult. He rolled and rumbled

horrible threats in his cleft palate, but they were not intelligible,

and Collins, striding forward, left him in the rear and joined Gaffer

Ash and Pinsent, who dwelt peaceably on the joys to come.

"A talk of moosicians there was," said Samuel.

"Right. The Yeomany band to play 'pon the lawn. An' gude pleasure, tu,

for them as likes brass moosic."

"How Maister Stapledon girned like a cat when the rice went down

onderneath his clean collar!"

"Ess, he did; 'twas a happy thought of mine."

"What's the value or sense in it I doan't see all the same," objected

Collins, whose day had now suffered eclipse. "'Pears to me 'tis a silly

act whether or no."

"That shaws how ill you'm learned in affairs," answered Mr. Ash calmly.

"The meanin' of rice at a weddin's very well knawn by onderstandin' men.

'Tis thrawed to ensure fruitfulness an' a long family. A dark branch of

larnin', I grant 'e; but for all that I've awnly knawed it fail wance;

an' then 'twern't no fault of the magic."

But Henry had been taught to regard a full quiver as no blessing.

"If that's what you done it for, 'twas a cruel unfriendly act," he

declared, "an' I stands up an' sez so, auld as you be. Devil's awn

wicked self caan't wish no worse harm to a innocent young pair than

endless childer. I knaw--who better?--being wan o' thirteen myself; an'

if I heard that was the use of it, not a grain would I have thrawed at

'em for money."

Churdles blinked, but was quite unmoved.

"You speak as a bachelor, my son, not to say as a fule. Black dog's got

'pon your shoulder this marnin'. A pity tu, for 'tis a perspiring day

wi'out temper. No rough language to-day. All peace an' plencheousness;

an' a glass o' black port, please God. Us'll feast wi' thankful hearts;

an' then go forth an' sit 'pon the spine-grass in the garden an' smoke

our pipes an' listen to the moosickers in the butivul sunshine."

"'Pears to me," said Gregory Libby, who had now rejoined them, "that you

chaps o' Endicott's did ought to give some return for all this guzzling

an' holiday making."

"Theer you'm wrong, as you mostly be, Greg," answered old Ash with a

serene smile, "for 'tis awnly a small mind caan't take a favour wi'out

worrittin' how to return it."

*BOOK II.*

*CHAPTER I.*

*THE SEEDS*

In late summer a strong breeze swept the Moor, hummed over the heather,

and sang in the chinks and crannies of the tors; while at earth-level

thin rags and tatters of mist, soaked with sunshine, raced beneath the

blue. Now they swallowed a hill in one transitory sweep of light; now

they dislimned in pearly tentacles and vanished magically, swept away by

the riotous breezes; now moisture again became visible, and grew and

gathered and laughed, and made a silver-grey home for rainbows. Beneath

was hot sunshine, the light of the ling, the wild pant and gasp of great

fitful zephyr, as he raced and roared along the lower planes of earth

and sky; above, free of the fret and tumult, there sailed, in the upper

chambers of the air, golden billows of cloud, rounded, massed and

gleaming, with their aerial foundations levelled into long true lines by

the rush of the western wind beneath them. Other air currents they knew

and obeyed, and as they travelled upon their proper way, like a moving

world, their peaks and promontories swelled and waned, spread and arose,

billowed into new continents, craned and tottered into new golden

pinnacles that drew their glory from the gates of the sun. To the sun,

indeed, and above him--to the very zenith where he had climbed at

noon--the scattered cloud armies swept and ascended; and their progress,

viewed from earth, was majestic as the journey of remote stars, compared

with the rapid frolics of the Mother o' Mist beneath.

A man and a woman appeared together on the high ground above Bear Down,

and surveyed the tremendous valleys where Teign's course swept to

distant Whiddon and vanished in the gorges of Fingle. There, gleaming

across that land of ragged deer park and wild heathery precipices

crowned with fir, a rainbow spanned the river's channels, and the

transparent splendour of it bathed the distance with liquid colour,

softened by many a mile of moist air to the melting and misty delicacy

of opal.

"How flat the bow looks from this height," said the man.

"Fancy noting the shape with your eyes full of the colour!" answered the

woman.

He started and laughed.

"How curiously like poor Christopher Yeoland you said that, Honor. And

how like him to say it."

Myles and his wife were just returning from payment of a visit. They

had now been married a few months, and, with the recent past, there had

lifted off the head of the husband a load of anxiety. He looked younger

and his forehead seemed more open; he felt younger by a decade of years,

and his face only clouded at secret moments with one daily care.

Despite his whole-hearted and unconcealed joy he went in fear, for there

were vague suspicions in his head that the happiness of his heart was

too great. He believed that never, within human experience, had any man

approached so perilously near to absolute contentment as he did then.

Thus in his very happiness lay his alarm. As a reasonable being, he

knew that human life never makes enduring progress upon such fairy

lines, and he searched his horizon for the inevitable clouds. But none

appeared to his sight. Every letter he opened, every day that he

awakened, he expected, and even vaguely hoped for reverses to balance

his life, for minor troubles to order his existence more nearly with his

experience. He had been quite content to meet those usual slings and

arrows ranged against every man along the highway side of his

pilgrimage; and tribulation of a sort had made him feel safer in the

citadel of his good fortune. Indeed, he could conceive of no shaft

capable of serious penetration in his case, so that it spared the lives

of himself and his wife. Now the balance was set one way, and Providence

blessed the pair with full measure, pressed down and running over. All

succeeded on their land; all prospered in their homestead; all went well

with their hearts. On sleepless nights Stapledon fancied he heard a

kind, ghostly watchman cry out as much under the stars; and hearing, he

would turn and thank the God he did not know and sleep again.

"Gone!" said Honor, looking out where the rainbow died and the gleam of

it was swept out of being by the sturdy wind.

"So quickly; yet it spoke a true word before the wind scattered it; told

us so many things that only a rainbow can. It is everlasting, because

it is true. There's a beauty in absolute stark truth, Honor."

"Is there? Then the multiplication table's beautiful, dear love. If a

rainbow teaches me anything, it is what a short-lived matter beauty must

be--beauty and happiness and all that makes life worth living."

"But our rainbow is not built upon the mist."

"Don't think about the roots of it. So you are satisfied, leave them

alone. To analyse happiness is worse and more foolish, I should think,

than hunting for rainbow gold itself."

"I don't know. What is the happiness worth that won't stand analysis?

All the same, I understand you very well. I believe there is nothing

like prosperity and such a love of life as I feel now to make a man a

coward. Anybody can be brave when he's got everything to win and

nothing to lose; but it takes a big man to look ahead without a

quickened pulse when he's at the top of his desire, when he knows in the

heart of him that he's living through the happiest, best, most perfect

days the earth can offer. Remember that to me this earth is all. I

know of nothing whatever in me or anybody else that merits or justifies

an eternity. So I cling to every moment of my life, and of yours. I'm

a miser of minutes; I let the hours go with regret; I grudge the

night-time spent in unconsciousness; I delight to wake early and look at

you asleep and know you are mine, and that you love to be mine."

"It's a great deal of happiness for two people, Myles."

"So much that I fear, and, fearing, dim my happiness, and then blame

myself for such folly."

"The rainy day will come. You are like poor, dear Cramphorn, who scents

mystery in the open faces of flowers, suspects a tragedy at crossing of

knives or spilling of salt; sees Fate busy breeding trouble if a foot

but slips on a threshold. How he can have one happy moment I don't

know. He told me yesterday that circumstances led him to suspect the

end of the world by a thunder-planet before very long. And he said it

would be just Endicott luck if the crash came before the crops were

gathered, for our roots were a record this year."

"His daughters bother him a good deal."

"Yes; I do hope I may never have a daughter, Myles. It sounds unkind,

but I don't like girls. My personal experience of the only girl I ever

knew intimately, inclines me against them--Honor Endicott, I mean."

"Then we disagree," he said, and his eyes softened.

"Fancy, we actually differ, and differ by as much as the difference

between a boy and a girl! I would like a girl for head of the family.

I've known it work best so."

Honor did not answer.

While her husband had renewed his youth under the conditions of & happy

marriage, the same could hardly be said for her. She was well and

content, but more thoughtful. Her eyes twinkled into laughing stars

less often than of old. She made others laugh, but seldom laughed with

them as she had laughed with Christopher Yeoland. In the note of her

voice a sadder music, that had wakened at her first love's death,

remained.