"As to that, 'tis only those who won't see are blind. Eyesight's the

window of the house, but the ear is the door. A blow-fly on the

window-pane is big enough to hide the evening star--if you're content to

let it; but shut your eyes and you'll see the star in the blue, with

nought between it and your thoughts."

"It's so hard to be wise; and words are not warm, live things you can

cuddle. Oh, I want something smaller than myself to love! I had

lighted such a great fire of love; and now it's all burnt out, and no

green hope springing through the ashes."

"Be patient. Look forward, my Honor."

"There's nothing there--all blank."

"You're morbid; and that's the last foolishness I should ever have

thought to tax you with. Myles----"

"No--no; you don't understand. How should you understand?"

"Moonshine!"

"It wasn't moonshine. I wish I could think it was. But you must be

patient with me. It's so cold to open your eyes every morning with the

dull feeling that something sad is waiting for you to remember it. I'm

all winter, while the rest of the world is full of spring."

"And spring will touch you presently."

"I had built such castles in the air--painted such futures. First, my

boy was to be a soldier; but I grew frightened of that when I began to

fill in details of the picture; and then a farmer, but that did not

satisfy me at all. Presently my heart went out to the thought of his

being an artist--either in words or pictures, but an artist in deeds at

any rate. You don't know what I mean by that. One who thought and felt

like an artist--and walked so. He was to magnify the Lord and love the

earth, and all green things, and birds especially, and the changeful

sky. I did not think of him as loving men and women very

much--excepting me. So my silly thoughts sped and I shut my eyes, that

nobody should see my hope looking out of them. I was going to be the

mother of a great man--and I am only the mother of a great sorrow, after

all."

"A shared sorrow; don't forget that, my dear. There's three hearts to

take each a part of the load. More than that, for, beyond Myles and me,

every man's breast and woman's bosom is heavy for you here. A

widespread, real regret, though 'tis not their way to make much ado."

"They are very good to me--better than I deserve. I shall have more

thoughts for them now. Sorrow at least teaches sympathy. But my soul

has quite lost heart of late days, and I feel so old."

At this moment from the valley there came two persons along the path

where Honor's pony carriage stood. One appeared uneasy, the other in a

very halcyon halo of delight; for Sally, true to her resolve, had

indicated that a little attention from Mr. Collins would not be

unwelcome; and now they moved side by side upon a stolen walk.

Elsewhere Margery accompanied her parent to see a neighbour, and Sally

was supposed to be at the farm.

The pair made awkward acknowledgments and were proceeding, when Honor

noted an unusual decoration about her milkmaid's neck. In addition to a

string of glass pearls, a little necklace of birds' eggs--alternate

thrush and blackbird--adorned Sally's plump throat, and the spectacle,

suggestive as it was of robbed nests, woke a wave of passing indignation

in Honor's heart.

"What is that round your neck?" she asked with a sudden hardness in her

voice; and Sally's hands went up gingerly to the frail adornment, while

she looked at Collins, whose gift, snatched from screaming birds, she

wore. Seeing explanation was expected from him, Henry stood forward,

touched his Sunday hat, and spoke with many stumblings.

"Beggin' pardon, I'm sure, ma'am, I----"

"You robbed the birds, Collins?"

"Ess, I did, but if you call home last cherry-time, ma'am; if I may say

so--you see I did as you bid an' shot a braave lot last autumn, as you

wanted--them being so bowldacious as to eat your fruit; an' come autumn

an' winter, I catched a gude few in traps what I teeled in the garden.

Then, come spring, I had a bright thought that if I took the eggs of 'em

'twould mean gert thinning out o' the birds. An' no account neither, if

I may say so; 'cause a egg's just life in the raw, waitin' for warmth

an' time to quicken it. They never lived like, savin' your presence, so

the airth ban't the poorer by a bird's note, 'cause us caan't lose what

we never had. 'Tis no more'n a seed spoiled, or a leaf-bud nipped by

frost, or a cheel still----"

He clapped his hand over his mouth and heard Sally say "Fule!" under her

breath; but his mistress nodded and bid him go on his way.

"You may be right; but take no more eggs from the birds."

So Mr. Collins got himself out of sight to the tune of a reprimand from

Sally that made his ears tingle.

"You gert, clumsy-mouthed gawk! To utter such a speech an' tellin' that

stuff to her, an' go mumblin' on, like a bumble-bee in a foxglove; an'

end up so! Not the sense of a sheep you ain't got!"

She tore off his gift and stamped on the blown shells, while he merely

stood and rolled his great eyes wretchedly.

Elsewhere Endicott spoke to his niece.

"Strange how a chance word out of a fool's mouth will often come pat.

These things--eggs--buds--babies are so little account in the great sum

total. Nature's units don't trouble her. The crushed windflower will

bud and blow again next year. What is a year to her? The robbed

mother-bird screams for an hour, then goes on with the vital business of

preserving her own life; and the robbed mother-woman--her heart aches

to-day, but the pain soothes off presently as the months and years roll

over first memories. We're built to forget; else the world would be a

madhouse, or just one great welter of sorrow. 'Tis God's way, I judge,

seldom to put upon us more than we can bear. If grief or pain's past

bearing--why then the heart or something cracks and there's an end of

us. But sorrow alone never killed a healthy being. I'd rather count it

the torch that lights to the greatest deeds we're built to do. I hoped

that a little child would draw you together--Myles and you--close, close

as soil and seed; but 'tis a shared grief must do it--instead of a

shared joy. Such a welding, as by fire, may last longest after all."

She sighed, touched her pony with the whip, in a sort of thoughtful

caress, and turned him homewards.

"I don't know what Myles thinks about it. Either he hides all he feels

to save me--or he is forgetting, as you say. It is natural that he

should. No man that ever lived can know how long those nine months are

to a woman. But I--I--there it is in the wind--in the rustle of the

leaves. I hear it so often--the sound of a rocking cradle. I must wait

until the wind sings a different song before I can be wise. Some day I

shall wake up strong again--strong to acknowledge all your goodness and

everybody's goodness and sympathy. I cannot yet."

The old man was moved for her. He put his hand on hers and patted it.

"I think I understand as much as an ancient bachelor may. But you must

do your share and help the powers to help you. There's an effort called

for. Hard to make, but you must make it. Take up your life again--the

old life that you laid down; an' do it with a single heart."

"I cannot yet. I left it behind so gladly. I must go back for it. I

do not care about any life just now. I cannot cry or laugh with my

heart. It's all pretence--think what that means. I look at everything

from the outside--like Christo used to. I'm a dead, withered bough

still on the tree; and what is it to me that the next bough is busy

about new leaves?"

"You do yourself a wrong to say so, and I'd not listen to anybody else

who spoke so ill of you. You must come back to yourself--your own good

self--and the sooner the better. That's a plain duty at least--not to

be escaped from. That's a call, whether your heart's sad or merry.

'Tis the honest, everyday duty of a woman to be good, dear heart--same

as it's the duty of a Mary lily to be white. Keep your proper colour,

as God meant you, and as God taught you. Live as you have lived: with a

sense of duty for the sake of those that love you, if no better reason."

She sighed again, aweary of the subject.

"Now we'll go home. We're wasting my first breath of sweet air in

words. Better to draw it in silently and not turn it into talk."

Mark Endicott laughed.

"Why, yes, it does the heart more good that way, no doubt. You're a

deal wiser than I am, niece, for all my grey hairs and jackdaw chatter."

Then slowly down the hill, without more speech, they drove together.

*CHAPTER IX.*

*AN OLD-TIME PRESCRIPTION*

From the occasion of her drive upon the Moor, Honor, instead of

proceeding towards good health, fell away in that desired progress.

What chance had conspired to an effect so unfortunate none knew, but the

fact was apparent, and as days passed and summer returned, there stole

gradually upon her a listless and inert attitude of spirit--a state of

the mind that reflected upon her physical condition and appeared in a

most despondent outlook upon life. From time to time some transient

gleam of returning health and happiness gladdened those who loved her;

but weeks passed and still Honor's temper was of a sort that kept Myles

anxious and Doctor Mathers exasperated. For she proved not a good

patient and none could prevail upon her to consider the foreign travel

and sea voyage that her physician stood out for at every visit. She

told them that she was well enough at home; that her health improved;

and that they need be under no concern for her. Meanwhile, her life

grew narrower and narrower, both in its bounds of thought and

performance. Her reflections indeed she kept to herself for the most

part, and certainly the event responsible in great measure for her

sustained ill-health she imparted to no one; but her actions were

obvious, and Myles began to grow care-worn as he watched a life so full

of energy and various interest now sink into mere mechanical existence.

Her walks dwindled to strolls; Nature brought Honor no particular

delight; and the old haunts failed to cheer her. Until midday she rarely

stirred from her own room, and sometimes she would keep her bed

altogether from sheer indifference toward affairs.

This life of ashes, which neither love nor duty seemed capable of

rousing into renewed activity and vigour, was beheld in its dreary

unfolding by the little population of Bear Down; and that busy hive,

both in season and out, discussed this grave crisis in the fortunes of

its mistress and offered all manner of suggestions and advice upon it.

Some opinions were undoubtedly sensible enough, as when Churdles Ash

counselled forcible compliance with the doctor's orders.

"You'm her lawful lard an' master," he said to Stapledon; "so 'tis your

dooty to hale your lady away to furrin paarts, whether her will or no.

She'll be fust to thank 'e, dear sawl, come her gets whole again."

But Myles knew Honor well enough, or little enough, to believe that such

a high-handed course must be futile. Long and anxious were the

deliberations he held with his uncle, and there came a time when Mark

suggested a visit from some great physician of expert knowledge.

"Have a London chap," he proposed. "Honor doesn't care a fig for

Mathers. But maybe a keen pair of eyes, and a big forehead, and a big

voice, and the knowledge it's cost perhaps a hundred pounds to fetch it

all down to see her, might bring the woman to some sense."

"I proposed it. She wouldn't hear of it."

"Very well; don't let her hear of it--till the man is in the house. Get

Mathers to tell you of some great wonder whose strong point is all these

nerve twists and tangles that Honor's struggling under. For a woman to

take to thinking, is as bad as for a man to take to drinking--sometimes.

It breeds a wrong habit and interferes with Nature. There's a mystery

under all this--ever since that sad mischance--and as she won't tell

those that love her maybe a clever doctor, who understands the springs

of healthy mental action, will find a way to bring back her peace."

"There's a secret, as you say; and I've known it on her tongue; I've

felt that it was to be revealed at last. Then there has come a sigh,

like the shutting of a door of the mind--a door not to be opened from

the outside."

"That is so--and it may be a doctor's work to open that door, instead of

a husband's. We'll hope I'm right. Fetch such a man along, if it costs

the hay harvest. It's all drouthy nothings here with this fever eating

the girl alive."

While Mark Endicott and his nephew thus debated the question of the hour

and sought for one able to storm the dim domain of Honor's neurotic

disorders, Mr. Ash, Mr. Cramphorn, and others of Endicott's took counsel

among themselves how best the tribulation might be overcome.

Ash now regarded the illness as a moonstroke, and was of opinion that

doses of lunar radiance alone would restore their mistress.

"Moon must undo what moon's done," he announced. But Cramphorn knew of

no precedent, and therefore scoffed at the idea.

"Never was I lower in my spirits," the head-man declared; "an' the

plague is that gen'lefolks be so exalted in their awn opinions that no

word of ours will they heed, though we spoke wi' the tongues of fire.

What do they care for organy tea an' such-like herbs of the field? Yet

here I stand, a living sawl, as would be dust at this hour, but for that

an' other such-like simples. Cherry Grepe's 'pon theer black books, or,

if they'd had sense, they'd have thrawed awver that bwoy--that

Mathers--an' gived her a chance to shaw her gert gifts. So like as not

she've got a cunning remedy for this dark complaint--a mess of some sort

as would put our lady right, mind an' body, in a week. Many a time have

I seen a wise man or woman by mere force of words, wi'out so much as

striking the sickness, charm it that sudden, as wan might a'most say he

seed the evil fly from a party's mouth--like a leather-bird,[#]

a-screechin' across the dimpsy light."

[#] A leather-bird = a bat.

"Ess; 'tis pity they doan't give Mother Grepe a chance," admitted

Churdles Ash; "for wi' all her little ways an' secrets, she do worship

the same Saviour in heaven as her betters do--onless she'm a liar."

"A white witch for sartain," declared Collins. "An' her charmed a wart

for Tommy Bates but last week, an' done it in the name of Jesus Christ,

an' awnly axed a threp'ny-bit."

So the men discussed Honor's evil case during a dinner interval on the

land, then returned to work, regretful that those most involved thus

persisted in overlooking a possible means of grace in their hour of

tribulation.

But while Collins and the rest dismissed this matter before work and

those personal interests of life uppermost in all minds, Mr. Cramphorn

continued to dwell darkly upon the subject. This cross-grained, surly

soul loved his mistress with an affection superior to that commanded by

his own flesh and blood. Herein circumstances and even heredity were

strong upon him. Sprung from a line that had laboured at Endicott's

through many generations, the descendant of men who were born heirs of

toil upon this land and looked to the reigning powers as their immediate

lords under Providence, a traditionary regard dwelt in the blood of him,

and the concerns of those who controlled his destiny became Cramphorn's

own concerns. Such a spirit modern education and the spread of

knowledge drives quickly forth, for the half-educated class of to-day

scorns gratitude as a base survival; but Jonah dated from long before

the Board Schools, and their frosty influence was no more in his heart

than upon his tongue. Sour, conceited, a very rustic Malvolio, he might

be; but the nobler qualities of Malvolio, he also possessed. It was not

the least among his vague regrets that the name of Endicott must

presently vanish from Bear Down, even as the name of Cramphorn was

destined to.

And now Jonah thought upon the word of Churdles Ash concerning the wise

woman. His own experience of her powers also inclined him in that

direction, and finally he decided to visit her again. That Cherry had

destroyed Christopher Yeoland he did not doubt; that she might, if she

would, cure his mistress, he was assured. He determined that if the

thing could be done for half a sovereign, done it must be. And should

Cherry's charm prove powerful enough to work without the patient's

connivance, so much the better.

That same evening he visited the cottage of the sorceress, where it lay

behind the low wall, and the row of ox vertebrae, and the torch of the

great mullein, that now towered aloft with its first blossoms shining in

the gloaming above a woolly spire.

Gammer Grepe was at home and in her garden. She stood with her arms

folded on the gate, and Cramphorn observed that she smoked a clay pipe

with the manner of long experience. He asked civilly for a little

conversation and followed the old woman into her cottage.

"Walk in an' welcome, if there's any money to it," she said bluntly.

"'Tis 'bout them gals again, I s'pose. Tu gert a handful for 'e, eh?

You'm a fule to fret, for they'll go theer ways wi'out axin' your leave.

Be your peas a-come to the farm? Might let 'em knaw as I've got half a

quart or so, if Mrs. Stapledon fancies 'em."

"Ess, our peas be come, an' it 'idden 'bout my darters I'm here; an'

fule or no fule, it takes two to make a weddin'; an' if the proper chap

ban't on-coming, us have got to sit down an' wait, like nesseltripe. I

be here touching the mistress of Endicott's."

Cherry frowned.

"I've no word against her, as you knaw, but the rest of 'em--that auld

blind piece an' her husband--specially him--I doan't set no store by.

She'm what a Endicott should be. T'others I'd so soon ill-wish as

not--just to larn 'em the things they doan't believe."

Her eyes glimmered with anger, and the candlelight played pranks with

her aged but not venerable face.

"Well, 'tis peace rather than war so far as I'm consarned. I know what

you can do--who better?"

"Ess; an' for all theer hard words I'd rather starve than hurt

Endicott's. 'Tis his loss, not mine--this furriner she've married. Not

but what I might to-morrow----"

"'Tis the very thing I be come upon," interrupted Jonah eagerly.

"Her--the mistress. What do this green youth by name of Mathers knaw?

If he'd got the wit of a louse he'd never have let the cheel slip

through his fingers. But her--she'll slip through his fingers next."

"Ban't no doctor's job now," said Cherry. "The things that could cure

her trouble doan't come out of shops. For tearings of heart, an' black

night vapours, an' such-like deep ills the very herbs o' the fields are

vain. You want sterner food."

"'Tis her sawl be sick by all the looks of it," explained Jonah. "An'

it tells 'pon the butivul body of her, like a blight 'pon a rose.

She've been ill, to an' from, ever since the bearin' of that dead baaby;

an' from being a woman of ready spirit she've grawed that down-daunted

as you'd a'most say she'd cry or run if a goose hissed at her. An' now,

be gormed if she ban't comin' to be a regular bed-lier! Think of her,

so peart an' spry as she was, keepin' her room these summer days! Caan't

'e offer for to cure her, Cherry? I lay theer'd be gude money to it an'

plenty, whatever hard thoughts some have got against you."

"Theer's but wan cure as I knaws for her," said the old woman gloomily;

"an ugly, savage cure, an' fallen out of use these many days now. But a

sure balm and a thing as eats to the heart like a cancer, rubbed under a

woman's left breast."

"God's truth, mum!"

"'Tis as I tell 'e. Like a cancer; but 'stead of being death to the

livin', 'tis life to the dyin', or them like to die. A savage cure, an'

such latter-day stuff as Myles Stapledon would awnly cock his nose at

it; so it won't be done, however. An' her'll die--her'll die for need

of oil of man. 'Tis that--a thing in no books--a secret as'll be a dead

and buried secret in a few years' time, when me an' the likes of me be

dead an' buried."

"Oil of man? I've heard Churdles Ash name it."

"Ess, he'd be sure to knaw at his age. 'Tis simple enough. Theer's a

virtue in all bones--that everybody knaws who's drinked soup, I s'pose."

"Surely; an' the better the bone, the better the broth," assented Jonah.

"That's it! You've hit the point I was comin' to. So it happens that a

Christian bone of a human be fuller far of virtue than any saved from a

sheep or other beast."

Cramphorn felt a cold shiver slide up his spine like a speedy snail, and

spread out upon his neck and shoulders.

"Christ A'mighty! What be tellin' 'bout? Would 'e have folks turn into

black cannibals?"

"Didn't I say 'twas used outwardly, you gaby? Oil of man be rubbed 'pon

the heart, or be burnt like a candle. In that shaape 'tis a torch held

up for them wanderin' in the world to come home to others as yearns for

'em. Both ways be precious deeds. Theer ban't none wanderin' she

wants; so us must rub it 'pon her heart against this fit she'm suffering

from."

"Wheer's such a thing to be got?"

"You ax that! As for preparin' the bones, 'tis my work. Gettin' of 'em

be a man's."

Mr. Cramphorn breathed hard.

"A sure cure?" he asked.

"Sure as Scripture. An' a thing knawed for centuries, so my mother used

to tell me. She made it a score o' times a'most. Men was braver then."

"Just--churchyard--bones," murmured Jonah with an expression like a dog

half frightened, half angry.

"The skull of a man--no more. Bones as have held human brains. I'll do

my paart for ten shillin'--same as you gived me when----"

"Hush, for the Lard's sake! Doan't 'e go back to that."

She laughed.

"You knaw at any rate that I ban't a vain talker. I'll say no more.

Awnly if you'm serious set on restorin' Honor Stapledon to her rightful

health, 'tis in your power. Mrs. Loveys can rub the stuff in when she's

asleep if she won't consent to no other way. An' her'll come to herself

again in a fortnight."

"Be so mortal light of evenings now, an' never dark all night," said

Cramphorn, his mind running ahead.

"That's your outlook. If you'm man enough to go an' dig----"

"I be in a maze," he confessed. "Never heard tell of such a fearful

balm in my born days."

"Very likely. Theer's more hid than you'll ever knaw, in this world or

the next."

"I must think upon it. 'Tis a onruly, wild, dangerous deed. Might lead

to trouble."

"'Tis a rightful, high act if you ax me. God'll knaw why for you be

theer. Theer's a reward for the salvation of our fellow-creatures in

next world if not this; an' I'm sure theer did ought to be, for I've

saved enough in my time."

"I'll think about it serious," said Cramphorn, who was now desperately

anxious to be gone.

"Just a bone against a woman's life. You think about it as you say."

"So I will, then, wi' all my strength."

Before he had reached the gate Cherry Grepe called him back.

"An' look here, I'll do my share for three half-crowns, seein' it's for

her. I'm allus awnly tu glad to do gude deeds so cheap as can be,

though wi' evil actions 'tis differ'nt. They win high wages all the

world awver."

Then Jonah retreated with his dreadful idea, yet found that as it became

more familiar it began to look less terrible. For all his follies and

superstitions, he lacked not physical courage, and once assured by

Gammer Grepe that such a sacrilege would be judged by his Maker from the

standpoint of its motive, he troubled no further as to the performance

of the deed. Thenceforward his mind was busy with details as to how such

an enterprise might be safely achieved, and through his head passed the

spectacle of many green graves. Even before the familiar memories of

those who slept beneath them the dogged Jonah winced not; but presently

a new reflection glared in upon his mind--an idea so tremendous that the

man stood still and gasped before it, as though petrified by the force

of his own imagination. For a moment this aspect peopled the night with

whispering phantoms; it even set Jonah running with his heart in his

mouth; then the wave of personal fear passed and left him well over the

shock his thought had brought with it. But the effect of so much

excitement and such unwonted exercise took a longer time to depart; his

nerves played him some tricks; he was more than usually taciturn at

supper, and retired to rest soon after that meal.

Yet, once in bed, Jonah's thoughts kept him such active and unfamiliar

company that sleep quite forsook his couch, and it wanted but a little

time of the hour for rising when finally he lost consciousness--to do

grim deeds in dreamland.

*CHAPTER X.*

*OIL OF MAN*

Concerning this weird medicament, it is only necessary to state that

memory of the nostrum lingers yet in ancient and bucolic minds; while

the tradition, now nearly extinct, is nevertheless founded upon matters

of fact from a recent past. For your Oil of Man was counted precious

medicine through bygone centuries, and in the archives it may be gleaned

that Moses Charras, author of a Royal Pharmacopoeia, published two

hundred years ago, indicates the nature of its preparation, and declares

how that the skulls of healthy men, slain in full flush of their

strength by lead or steel, best meet its requirements. One Salmon of

London prepared and sold _Potestates cranii humani_ at the sign of the

"Blew Bull," in Shoe Lane, during the sixteenth century; _oleum humanum_

has within man's memory been a source of advantage to the porters of our

medical schools; and, at a date even later than that of which we treat,

a physician practising hard by Dartmoor received applications for the

magic antidote from one who found herself in private trouble beyond

reach of common drugs. She believed that oil of man must still be a

medicinal commodity general as rhubarb or syrup of squills.

It was not surprising, therefore, that Cherry Grepe remembered the

potent force of this remedy, or that Jonah Cramphorn, once satisfied

that the decoction alone stood between his mistress and her end,

determined to procure it. A great thought kept him waking until the sun

was ready to ascend above the remote gorges of Fingle; but when Jonah

rose, cold water and daylight finally dwarfed the dim horrors of his

project until they grew perfectly plain before him. That the plan was

defensible his strenuous spirit had long since decided. But an

accomplice seemed necessary to such a design, for the feat was of too

great a magnitude and peril to be achieved single-handed. The common

operation of two willing workers might, however, make all the

difference, and while he regretted a need for assistance, Jonah felt it

to be imperative. Upon the subject of punishment in event of detection,

he did not waste thought. The prospect from that standpoint was

undoubtedly dark--too dark to dwell upon. The power of the law he could

only guess at, and in his mind was a tumultuous upheaval of old

recollections touching the theme. He remembered Burke, Hare, and others

of their trade; but they had killed men; he proposed no action more

unlawful than taking of bones long dead.

To choose his assistant for a matter so delicate appeared difficult in

one aspect, yet simple enough viewed practically. That he must broach

such a subject to a sane man offered no embarrassment to Mr. Cramphorn;

but to select a kindred soul, of stuff sufficiently stern to help with

the actual details, promised a harder problem. Scarcity of choice,

however, tended towards elucidation. The field was narrowed to an

option between Pinsent and Collins; of whom Jonah quickly decided for

the latter. By midday indeed he determined that Henry should

participate both in the peril and the privilege of restoring Honor to

health.

The men met soon after noon near the farmyard, and Cramphorn seized his

opportunity.

"Come in here, an' put home the door behind 'e, Henery Collins," he

said; "I've got somethin' mighty serious to say to you. For your ear

awnly 'tis; an' you'll be very much dumbfounded to larn as you an' me be

chosen by Providence for a gert, far-reachin' deed."

In the dim light of a stable Mr. Collins gazed with round, innocent eyes

at the speaker; then he began to clean his boots on a spade.

"Whatever do 'e mean? Providence doan't chose the likes of me for its

uses, I reckon."

"I stand for Providence in this thing; an' I mean missus. Theer's no

nature left in her now, as you must see along wi' the rest. An' why

for? 'Cause she'm fadin' away like a cloud. So wisht an' hag wi' her

trouble--an' her not quarter of a century auld yet. Dyin'--dyin' afore

our eyes; an' theer's awnly one creation as'll save her; an' that's for

you an' me to get, my son. 'Tis ordained as we'm the parties."

"Sure, I'd go to world's end for her," declared Mr. Collins.

"No need. No call to go further'n Little Silver buryin' ground."

"Then, if 'tis any deed of darkness, you'd best to put it in other hands

to wance."

"No fay--you an' me. An' a high an' desperate act--I won't deceive you

theer--but a act righteous in the eye of God; though, if it got knawed

by humans, theer'd be trouble."

"I'm tu peaceful in my ways for it then, an' I'll take it very kind if

you'll say no more about it to me at all. Ban't in my line."

"Tu late; you'm in the plot; an' you ought to be a proud man if you do

feel all for missus as I've heard 'e say scores o' times, in drink an'

out. Ess, you must do what I ax you; theer ban't no gwaine back now."

Mr. Collins reflected. He believed, despite the eggshell necklace, that

he still gained ground with Jonah's elder daughter in that she tolerated

him at less than a yard's distance by fits and starts; but the necessity

for not proposing marriage Henry felt to hamper his movements. That

Sally might refuse--perhaps a dozen times--was nothing against the

argument, for a rustic love-maker is as patient as Nature's self. But

in the heart of Collins, obedience to anybody who ordered him with voice

sufficiently loud, was a rooted instinct. He had abided by Jonah's

clear utterance during time past; and now he remembered it, and,

astonished at his own astuteness, sought to make a bargain.

"If I help 'e with this thing, will 'e let me offer marriage to your

eldest darter?"

The other was much astonished, for his views upon the subject of Sally

had changed somewhat under Margery's delicate manipulation.

"Offer! Powers! I thought as you'd axed her years agone. What's to

hinder 'e? 'Tis a free country, an' you'm auld enough to knaw your awn

minds, ban't 'e?"

The younger labourer was hurt, and showed as much.

"Your memory's grawin' short seemin'ly," he said. "No matter. If you

say I may ax her--'tis all I want. Then I'll serve 'e to the best of my

power."

In less than half an hour Henry Collins departed from the stable a

haunted man. His eyes roamed like those of a frightened horse; he would

have given the wide world to be a thousand miles from Bear Down; for the

deed without a name made him tremble to the foundations of his being and

threw him into an icy perspiration each time that its significance

crossed his mind. Only the permission to propose to Sally sustained

him; and even his love could hardly stand the ordeal of this test, for,

to tell truth, he doubted more than once whether the game was worth the

candle.

How he lived through those moments that separated him from the night

Henry never afterwards remembered; but the suspense only endured through

some few hours, for Mr. Cramphorn, after revealing his design, perceived

that it must be put into immediate execution if the other's help was to

be counted upon.

"Give the fule time and he'll draw back or bolt," reflected Jonah.

But the sombre minutes, deep laden each with its own horrid burden of

terror and presentment, flapped their bat-wings away into the limbo of

time past, and a moment arrived--midnight between two days of late

July--when Collins and his leader met by appointment at a spot in the

great hayfield of Endicott's, and together proceeded down the hill to

Little Silver.

Henry carried an unlighted bull's-eye lantern; Cramphorn's pocket

bulged, and in his hand he bore a small bag of battered leather. Under

their breath they discussed the matter. The night was moonless, and a

haze of heat stole abroad upon the land. Pale green light shuddered

along the north-eastern horizon, and the faces of umbel-bearing flowers

caught it and spoke of it dimly out of the darkness. A dewy peace held

the world--a peace only broken by the throb of the field-crickets that

pulsed upon the ear infinitely loud in contrast with the alternate

silences. Mist enveloped all things in the valleys, and as the men sank

towards the churchyard, Collins shivered before cold moisture that

brushed his face like a dead hand.

"'Tis a thing beyond all belief," he said; "an' I be very glad as you

didn't give me more'n a day to think, else I should have runned away

rather than faace it."

"'Tis a ugly thing done for a butivul purpose. 'Tis the best work as

ever that brain-pan will have to its credit in this here world."

"'Struth! I cream all awver to hear 'e! Such courage as you've got.

Did 'e get the keys?"

"Ess; when Noah Brimblecombe was up to the rectory. I seed un go; then

went in the cottage an' waited, an' when his missus had her back turned

at the door, I pulled the curtain in the corner, under the cloam images

wheer the church keys all hang to. And them I wanted I found. To put

'em back wi'out him knawin' will be a harder job."

"An' arter the--the screws, theer'll be a lead case, I s'pose--have 'e

thought 'pon that? But I lay you have."

"I've got a mall an' cold chisel in my bag. Ban't no harder than

openin' a chest of tea," answered the old man grimly.

Mr. Collins whined and shivered.

"To think of it! The mystery of it! If she knawed--the very man she

promised to wed. 'Tis tu gashly; I been ever since this marnin'

broodin' awver the business."

"A gert thought--that's what it was, an' I be proud of it; an' if 'tis

ever knawed an' telled about after I'm dead and gone, folks'll say

'tweern't no common man as carried out such a projec'. A fule would

have digged in the airth an' be catched so easy as want-catcher kills

moles; but theer's brains goes to this item. I minded Christopher

Yeoland--him as was taken off in full power an' pride of life by a

snake-sting; an' I minded how nought but the twist of a key an' the

touch of a turnscrew still lay between him an' the quick."

"Twas 'cause you hated un so mortal bad livin' as your thoughts ran upon

him dead," ventured Collins uneasily.

"Not so 'tall. As to hatin' un, I did; but that's neither here nor

theer. I'm just a tool in this matter, an' the dead dust of Christopher

Yeoland ban't no more to me than the ridge of airth a plough turns. 'Tis

a fact this same dust an' me comed to blows in time agone; but all these

frettings an' failings be forgotten now, though we weern't no ways

jonic--a empty, lecherous man. Still, he've answered for his sins, an'

I hates un no more. I awnly wants a bit of the 'natomy of un for a

precious balm; then 'tis screws again, an' locks again; an' none wiser

'cept you an' me an' the spiders."

"Theer's God A'mighty."

"I doan't forget that. The Lard's on our side, or I shouldn't be here.

No puzzle for Him. No doubt Judgment Day will find the man all of a

piece again to take his deserts."

"You'm a wonder--to talk of such a fatal deed as if 'twas no more'n

pullin' a turnip."

"An' that's how us should look 'pon it. An' if 'twas a turnip axed for,

a turnip I'd have got."

They now entered the churchyard from its south-western side by a hole in

the hedge. Mr. Collins lighted his lantern and passed over the graves

like a drunken Will-o'-the-wisp with many a trip and stagger. Then he

stood under the skulls of the Yeoland mausoleum, and glanced fearfully

up where they grinned, and his light seemed to set red eyeballs rolling

in their mossy sockets.

Soon both men had entered the sepulchre, and Henry happily burned

himself with the lantern as he did so--an accident that served to steady

his nerves and shut his mouth upon chattering teeth. Jonah, too, felt

the tragedy of the situation, but in a higher spirit, and the peacock

part of the man played him true, though only coffins were his audience.

He thought how ages unborn might ring with this desperate deed; he even

determined that, if the matter leaked out no sooner, he would himself

confess it upon his death-bed, when ignoble retaliation would be

impossible, and little time left for much save admiration and applause.

This he resolved as he lifted the pall of Christopher's coffin and

observed how that damp had already begun to paint the brass inscription

green.

He opened his bag, bade Henry keep the lantern steady and shut his

mouth, then calmly removed his coat, turned up his sleeves, and began

his work. But the task proved harder than he had anticipated, and his

assistant, after one bungling effort to aid, was forced to abandon any

second attempt. To hold the lantern proved the limit of his power; and

even that bobbed every way, now throwing light among the dim shadows

upon the shelves, now blazing into Jonah's eyes, now revolving

helplessly over the ceiling of the vault. Presently Cramphorn grew

annoyed as well as warm, and, aware that precious time was passing,

swore so loudly that a new, material terror overtook his companion.

"For God's grace, doan't 'e bawl so loud!" he implored. "If p'liceman

was ridin' past and catched us!"

Though he felt no flicker of fear, Jonah realised the value of this

counsel. He looked to see that the door was shut fast, then proceeded

with his work in silence. The reluctant screws came out quicker as he

acquired increased skill, and from their raw holes issued a faint smell

of eucalyptus, for the coffin was built of that wood.

At last the men together lifted the lid, and set it in a corner. Then a

sterner task awaited them where the lead shell lay bare. Noise of

mallet on chisel was now inevitable, and Collins heard himself directed

to stand sentry at the churchyard gate, so that if the nightly patrol

should pass that way on his uncertain round, silence might fall until he

had departed beyond earshot. Probability of any other human visitor

there was none, unless the doctor chanced to be abroad.

Henry therefore got out into the fresh air very willingly, and before

long sat him down at the churchyard gate and listened to muffled

activity from Jonah's mallet in the distance. One other sound disturbed

the night. Already grey dawn stole along the eastern woods, but the

deep, tranced hour before bird-waking was upon all things, and in its

loneliness Collins found the lap and chuckle of a stream under the

churchyard wall welcome as a companion. It knew action at least, and

broke the horrible stillness. Once he heard slow footfall of hoofs, and

was about to give an alarm, when, from the shadows, came forth an old

white horse that wandered alone through the night. Like a ghost it

dragged itself slowly past--perchance waking from pain, perchance

wondering, as such aged brutes may wonder, why grass and water are no

longer sweet. It hobbled painfully away, and the echo of its passing

was swallowed up in the silence, and the apparition of its body vanished

under the mist. There only remained the wakeful streamlet, leaping from

its dim journey among coffins into the watercress bed, and a hollow

reverberation of blows from the mortuary.

Presently, however, Mr. Cramphorn's mallet ceased to strike, and finding

that the supreme moment had now come, Collins nerved himself to return.

From the dawn-grey into gloom he stole to see the picture of Jonah in a

round ring of lantern light sharply painted upon darkness. A coffin,

with its inner leaden shell torn back, lay at Cramphorn's feet, and

Henry instantly observed that some tremendous and unforeseen

circumstance had fallen out during his vigil at the churchyard gate.

The other man was glaring before him like a lunatic; his short hair

bristled; his face dripped. Terrified he was not, yet clearly had become

the victim of amazed bewilderment and even horror.

"For Christ's sake, doan't 'e glaze at me like that!" implored Henry.

"What have 'e done? What's happened to 'e? Doan't tell me you'm struck

into that shaape for this high-handed job!"

The other's mouth was open and his under-jaw hung limp. Apparently he

lacked force to speak, for he merely pointed to his work; upon which

Collins looked sideways into the coffin with stealthy dread. Instantly

his face also became transformed into a display of liveliest

astonishment and dismay; but in his case frank terror crowded over him

like a storm. And thus three men--two living and one a corpse--each

confronted the others, while the marble serenity of this death offered a

contrast to the frenzied emotion on the faces of those that lived.

"God's gudeness! You've brawked into the wrong wan!" gasped Collins.

Jonah shook his head, for still he could not answer; yet the suspicion

of his companion seemed natural, because not Christopher Yeoland but

another lay at their feet.

Within the coffin, placid and little disfigured save where the eyes had

fallen in and the skin tightened over his high, bald brow, appeared a

venerable face--a face almost patriarchal. The dead man's beard gleamed

nobly white upon his breast, and his features presented the solemn,

peaceful countenance of one indifferent to this rude assault from busy

souls still in life.

"'Tis magic--black, wicked magic--that's what it is. Else he've been

took out an' another party put in unbeknawnst," stuttered Collins.

Then Cramphorn found his voice, and it came weak and thin with all the

vigour strained out of it by shock.

"Not him at all--an' like as not he never was in. A far-reachin',

historic action--that's what we've comed on. Our dark deed's brought to

light a darker."

"Which us'll have to keep damn quiet about," gasped Henry.

"'Tis a gert question how our duty do lie. My brains be dancin' out of

my eyes in water. Maybe we've found a murder. An' I caan't get the

thread of action all in a minute."

"'Tis daylight outside, anyway."

"Then for God's sake do your share, if you'm a man. Hammer that lead

back an' shut up this here ancient person--Methuselah he might be, from

the look of un. I be gone that weak in the sinews that a cheel could

thraw me. I must get a bite of air, then I'll help."

"You ban't gwaine!" cried Henry in terror; but Jonah remained in sight

and soon returned. Then, to the younger's great satisfaction, he heard

that his partner had quite abandoned the original enterprise and was

only desirous to make good their desecration and depart.

"It caan't surely be as a dead man graws auld quick after he's put

away?" asked Collins.

"A fule's question. 'Tis all a trick an' a strammin' gert lie worked

for some person's private ends. An' the bite comes to knaw how we'm

gwaine to let it out."

"Ess; we'm done for ourselves if we tell."

"Doan't talk; work. I must think bimebye when I'm out of this smell o'

death."

Henry obeyed, and showed considerable energy and despatch.

"He may be a livin' man still!"

"Young Yeoland? I'd guess it was so, if I didn't knaw 'bout Cherry

Grepe. Please God, mine be the intellects to smooth out this dark deed

anyways, so that generations yet to come shall call me blessed. Awnly

you keep your mouth shut--that's what you've got to do. Guy Fawkes an'

angels, to be faaced wi' such a coil!"

"It'll want a powerful strong brain to come out of it with any credit to

yourself," said Mr. Collins.

"As to that, such things be sent to those best able to support 'em."

"Well, no call to tell me to keep quiet. I'll not make or meddle, I

swear to 'e. If theer's any credit due an' any callin' of anybody

blessed, you may have the lot. I shall pray to God for my paart to let

me forget everythin' 'bout this night. An' seein' the things I do

forget, I awnly hope this will go like a breath o' air. Same time 'tis

more likely to haunt me to my dyin' day than not."

"Doan't drink, that's all. Forget it you won't; but doan't drink 'pon

it, else you'll let it out in the wrong ears for sartain. You ban't

built to keep in beer an' secrets to wance. An' take care of Ash, as

sleeps along wi' you. Have a lie ready if he's wakin' when you go

back."

In twenty minutes the matter was at an end, an old man's coffin once

more in its appointed place, and the family vault of the Yeolands locked

and double-locked. Collins and Cramphorn then left the churchyard, but

Jonah found himself without physical strength to start uphill

immediately; so the men retired to rest awhile within the crumbling

walls of Little Silver Castle, close at hand. There they sat, under the

great groined arches of the dungeon chamber, and whispered, while the

bats squeaked and clustered in their dark nooks and crannies at return

of day.

Then Cramphorn and his assistant proceeded homewards as they had

come--knee-deep through the grass lands--and before three o'clock both

were back in their beds again. Yet neither slept, for each, in

proportion to his intelligence, was oppressed by the thought of his

discovery and by the memory of an ancient face, autumn brown, yet having

a great white beard, that rippled over his breast and so passed out of

sight beneath the engirding lead.

*CHAPTER XI.*

*A CLEAN BREAST OF IT*

As discoveries of moment hidden for long years or through all past time

will suddenly and simultaneously burst, like Neptune, upon students

widely separated, yet pursuing one goal by divers roads, so now this

extraordinary circumstance stumbled upon by Jonah Cramphorn and his

companion during their secret enterprise was noised abroad within a

fortnight, yet without any action or intervention from them.

It is true that, despite his solemn promises, Henry Collins soon found

himself constitutionally unequal to preserving the secret, and he

confessed the same within a week of the incidents relating to it; but

those before whom he published his experience took no step upon it until

they heard the story in full detail at a later date. Then the whole

curious truth was blazed abroad.

Mr. Cramphorn, as soon as Noah Brimblecombe's keys were back on their

nail without awakening of suspicion, shut up his adventure stoutly

enough, while he pondered how best to reveal the discovery; but his

accomplice found the position far less endurable. Henry existed

henceforth like a man struggling under some grim incubus by day as well

as night. Sleep deserted him; his head ached; he found himself bungling

his work, and, upon this development, the man grew alarmed for his

brains and believed that he must be going mad. Even poor Henry's

love-star dwindled somewhat while yet this cloud of horror hung over

him, and though he had won permission from Sally's father to propose

marriage, such was the tremendous nature of the price paid and its

appendage of mental chaos that he found himself unequal to thoughts on

any other theme. He could not profit by his new powers for the present;

indeed, he felt that, until this knowledge was shifted on to other

shoulders, life would hold no happy moment. Five days he spent with his

secret; then, being strung to a pitch when his promise to Jonah ceased

to weigh with him, he determined to make a clean breast of the whole

matter. Everything should be divulged excepting only the name of his

partner. First rose the question of an ear for this confession, and,

hesitating only a moment between Mark Endicott and Myles, Mr. Collins

decided that he would tell them both. He thought also of the vicar, but

held, doubtless correctly, that his personal offence would bulk larger

in the eyes of Mr. Scobell than upon the view of those at Bear Down.

Chance to make his revelation offered within two nights of Henry's

decision, for then it happened that Cramphorn, his daughters, Churdles

Ash, and other of the hands tramped off to Chagford, where a travelling

circus was attracting the countryside. Henry, though he angered Sally

not a little by refusing to accompany her, found an opportunity

excellent for his purpose, and seized upon it. Left alone with the

blind man and Stapledon, Collins began tremulously to tell his story;

and his eyes rolled as he proceeded; and his voice often failed him or

rose into high squeaks between gulps of emotion; but he made his meaning

clear, and so lifted a weight from off his soul.

"Please, your honours, I've got a thing in my head as be burstin' it,

an' I'll thank you to let me have a tell now I be alone with you. A

devilish secret 'tis, an' I caan't keep my lips shut 'pon it no more, or

I shall go daft."

"Out with it then," said Stapledon. "Your brains weren't built for

devilish secrets, Henry."

"No, they wasn't," admitted Collins, "an' I'm glad to hear you allow it.

I do best I can wi' the gifts I've got--an' who could do more? An'

'twas last week as I promised to go along wi' another man whose name

theer ban't no call to mention. He'll answer for hisself 'pon the

Judgment Day; but I can't wait so long. I wants to get it awver now."

"Begin at the beginning, lad; talk quietly, and light your pipe. We're

friends and shan't let out your secret where it can hurt you," said

Mark.

"I'm sure I pray God to bless you for them words," answered Collins

earnestly; "but I can't smoke--the very taste of tobacco be changed

since. 'Tis like this--us wanted oil of man, which you might knaw

'bout, bein' so wise as you are."

"An old wife's remedy--well?"

"Whether or no, it was told to my mate that awnly oil of man stood

between missus here an' her death. So we ordained to fetch what was

needed in the faace of all men."

"For that old witch on the hill, I suppose?" asked Myles.

"I doan't name no names, axin' your humble pardon," answered Collins

uneasily. "This is my awn sacred confession--awnly my business an'

yours, if I may say it without rudeness. Anyway, we went for what was

wanted; an' that was a man's head bones--a chap cut off in fulness of

life for choice. An' my mate--a deep man, I allow that much--thought

fust of Bill Cousins--him took off by sunstroke two years ago; an' then

he reckoned 'twas beyond our power these short nights to dig for what we

wanted between dimpsy-light of evening an' morn. An' when he comed to

me he minded me how theer was quality buried above ground so well as

poor folks under; an' a young man slain in his strength by mischance.

Squire Christopher Yeoland he meant. A gashly auld thought, sure

enough; yet us steeled ourselves to it."

"You dared that sacrilege!" burst out Stapledon; but Collins merely

stared at him. Time had taken the labourer so far beyond this point in

the tragedy that not only did he forget its dramatic significance upon a

new listener, but also how he himself had felt when Jonah first broke it

to him.

"Ess; us set about the job. That ban't nothin'. 'Twas for love of

missus us done it. An' I watched while t'other worked; an' when he

stopped hammerin' an' I went back, he was starin' an' bristlin', 'cause

afore him laid--not the gen'leman us counted 'pon--but a very auld, aged

man, berry-brown from keepin', yet so sweet as a rose, wi' a gert white

beard to un."

"You broke into the wrong coffin!"

"No fay, us didn't. 'Tis the carpse what comed from furrin

paarts--anyways the box as did. Christopher Yeoland, beggin' his

pardon, was the name 'pon the brass. An' my mate was mazed; an' us

hammered back the lead all suent and tidy, an' screwed on the lid, an'

put un 'pon his shelf wance more an' slipped it home. That's the tale,

an' I'll take my oath of it afore God A'mighty's angel."

There followed a lengthy silence upon his story; then Mr. Collins made

an end.

"'Tis the awful hardness of sharin' such a dreadful secret wi' wan other

man as I caan't endure no more. An' I swear, by any deep word you

choose, that I never meant no findin' of anybody's secrets--awnly gude

to missus--as might have been saved by what we went for, but won't never

be better without it."

"That's as may be, Henry," said Mr. Endicott. "For the rest, this thing

is somebody's secret, as you say. Anyway you're not weighed down with it

now. You may hold yourself free of it, and if you take my advice,

having eased your mind, you'll go off to rest with a quiet conscience.

No great harm can fall on you at any rate. Perhaps none at all, for

I'll wager it was Cramphorn, not you, who hatched this piece of folly."

"Please, please, doan't name nobody, your honours!" implored Henry. "I

promised the man to bide still as a worm 'bout it. In fact I swore I

would. An' I did try to keep him off my tongue at any rate, an' thought

as I had."

"We shall not take any steps against him or you. Now go to bed and

sleep. You've done the right thing in telling us; but don't tell

anybody else."

Mr. Collins, not sorry to depart, did so, and for some minutes Stapledon

and the blind man continued to sit in silence, each busy with his own

thoughts. Then Mark spoke.

"A stunning, dislocating, play-acting piece of foolery, if it's true.

Yet somehow I know it is. There's a deal of light shed on darkness for

me, and for you too I reckon, by such an upheaval."

"Not so. I see no light--unless you believe this means that Christopher

Yeoland may still be alive."

"Yes, I think it means that; and such a return must be an earthquake

more or less in all the lives that were once connected with him. Men

can't die and live again without upsetting the world. A mad imagining.

Perhaps no mother's son but him would have dreamed of it. But the

motive----"

"That," said Myles quickly, "is all I can see. Knowing as much of the

man as I do, so much looks clear. When Clack joined him, I sent a

message. It was as urgent as need be, and to the effect that Honor

loved him still. That she loved me too Clack probably added to my

message. While one of us lived, Honor would never have married the

other. So this thing he did to make her road easy."

"If you're right, the puzzle comes together piece by piece."

"Excepting the old man in the coffin--supposing that it was a man."

Endicott reflected; then was struck with an idea.

"It may be that the death of this old man put the cranky thought into

Yeoland's head. If it was his kinsman that lies there instead of

himself, all's smoothed out. What simpler way to clear Honor's road?

This parade of evidence is made that there may be no doubt in any mind.

A Yeoland dies and is buried in the tomb of his forefathers. But after

all it wasn't our Yeoland."

"Did he mean to let this farce go on for ever?"

"No farce for him; yet, maybe, he got some solid joy out of it. A quick

mind for all his vagabond, empty life. He saw the position, and

reckoned that in fulness of time she might come to be a happy wife along

with you. Then this old relative dies at the right moment and sets a

spark to his imagination. No, I suppose we should never have known.

His idea would be to keep his secret close hid for ever from those it

concerned most--unless----"

He broke off and pursued his reflections in silence. Myles waited for

him to speak again, but the blind man only resumed his knitting.

"He blotted himself clean out of life for love of Honor," Stapledon at

length declared.

"That I believe. A strange, unlawful deed, yet 'tis a question whether

the law has any punishment. To think of the immense confusion of human

life if many graves yielded up their dead again!"

"And what is our course? Who can benefit or suffer if we state these

things? There's such huge folly about it when you think of details that

I feel as if it must all be a nightmare of Henry's."

"No, no; it's true enough."

"Then he may be married himself by this time, and in a new home, with

England a mere dream behind him?"

"I wish I thought he was, Myles--for--for general peace of mind; but I

don't. If he had a live, guiding, absorbing passion, after Honor, it

was Godleigh--the woods and hills and songs of Teign. These things were

in his blood. If I know him, they might have drawn him back with bands

of steel."

"Why didn't they do so then?"

"How can we say that they didn't?"

"What! He may have been here--at our elbows?"

"I see the likelihood of that clearer than you, being blind. Yes, I can

very easily think of him under shadow of night, with the true feel of a

ghost, rambling beneath his own trees--his and not his--or listening to

the river, or creeping to his own door when all men slept; or in the

dawn--such a lover of cock-light as he was--he would steal through the

dew with the birds to watch sunrise, then vanish and hide himself, or

get above to some wild ridge of the moor and lie there till darkness

gathered again. Such freaks would be meat and drink to him; and also to

remember that he was only a live man in Australia, but a dead one in his

own land. Just for argument suppose that was so; then look back a little

way and think it out."

But Myles could by no means divine his uncle's drift. Practical even

before this surprise, he was looking to the future, not backward, for

study of the past appeared vain, and doubly vain to him in this crisis.

"Not much use turning back," he said. "I want to know about the time to

come. These two--Collins and Cramphorn--through their fool's errand

have certainly unearthed an extraordinary fact: Christopher Yeoland's

secret, so to call it. And it is for us to determine whether our duty

is to proclaim the thing or not. There's Godleigh--it falls empty again

next autumn, for the people don't renew their lease."

"Well, Godleigh reverts to the man in Australia. The lawyers believe

that man is an ancient settler; we know, or think we know, that the

place has not really changed hands. Yeoland may reappear after giving

Little Silver due warning."

"Or, being a rolling stone, and probably no better off now than when he

left England, he may stop in Australia. Still, there's the chance of his

returning."

"Be sure he will, even if he has not done so," said Mark Endicott

firmly. "If 'tis only to the old life and old ways, he'll come back.

He'll say, as likely as not, that the thing he meant to do is done.

Honor is married and a happy wife. Who would deny him his own again

after that sacrifice?"

"I only think of Honor and the awful shock to her. It might kill her."

"Don't fret yourself there, or torture over that point. Now I'll say

what will astound you: I think Honor may very possibly be less amazed

and staggered at this news than ever you were, or I either."

"Not amazed! What do you--what in God's name do you mean by that? That

she knew? Knew it and hid it from me? That she suffers now

because----"

He broke off and sprang to his feet, while the other maintained silence

and let the stricken man stride away his passion and regain his

self-control. Soon enough Myles grew cool and contained. Then he

walked to Mark and put his hand on the old man's shoulder.

"Forgive me; but this is the utter, blasting wreck and ruin of my whole

life that you are hinting at," he said calmly.

"I hint at nothing," answered the other with unusual roughness. "Had I

thought any such impossible thing I should have been as big a fool as

you are. You ought to know your wife better than to believe she'd act a

lie of that sort."

"I don't believe it--I never said that I believed it Your words seemed

to imply that you must believe it. Else why do you suggest that Honor

would be less astonished to hear of this resurrection than you and I

are?"

"If you had taken a look back as I bid you, Myles, instead of rushing

forward without looking, you need not have asked me that question.

Glance back, even now, and what has been dark as the pit may lighten and

lift somewhat. Just call to mind the sorrow that has hung so heavily

over us of late days--the little chick that we counted so precious--too

soon."

But Stapledon was in no mental mood for retrospective or other thought.

A wide turmoil tossed the sea of his soul into storm; the terrible

weakness of the strong got hold upon him, and he rocked in one of those

moments when capacity to think deserts the mind, when intellect seems

overwhelmed.

"I cannot see what you see," he said. "I admit that I am blind and a

fool, but for God's sake don't ask me any more questions beyond my power

to answer. Tell me what you think, or know, or believe you know.

Consider what this means to me--the fact that Christopher Yeoland may be

alive--may have stood behind a hedge yesterday, and watched me pass, and

laughed. Don't you see? I've got Honor by falsehood--a false

pretence--a fraud."

"Not of your own breeding, if it is so. Your true and loving wife she

is for all time now, whether the man be dead or alive--though of that

there's a certain proof in my mind. I'd be the last to tear you with

questions at this minute. I only wanted you to see what has rushed in

upon me so sudden and fierce. Light in it every way--light in it for

you and for Honor, I pray God. If what I make out of this puzzle is

true, and Christopher Yeoland alive, then there may be matter for

rejoicing in the fact rather than gloom. Not darkness anyway. Now call

home to your mind that night in the woods, when at her silly whim, which

I was fool enough to support, you took your wife for a drive to Lee

Bridge."

"I remember it well enough."

"You left her to fetch water from the river, and while you were away she

got out of the pony carriage, light-footed and silent as a moonbeam, to

pick bluebells. Then suddenly there! Out of the mist and night--out of

the dim woods--the man! Wandering alone no doubt They met, and she,

being in no trim for such a fearful shock as the sight of one long dead

walking the earth again, went down before it. Think of her suddenly eye

to eye and face to face with him in the midst of night and sleep! It

froze her blood, and froze the poor little one's blood too--that thawed

no more. For she thought him a spectral thing, an' thinks so

still--_thinks so still_! That's the dark secret she's dumb about and

won't whisper to you or me, though she's been near telling us once or

twice. That's what has been eating her heart out; that's what neither

your prayers nor mine could get from her. She must be made to

understand in careful words that will ask your best skill to choose

aright She must learn that you have discovered what she's hiding, and

that it was flesh and blood, not phantom, she saw. 'Tis a pity, if what

I say is fact, that the fool ran away when he saw you coming to succour

her. The harm was done by that time; and if we had known, how many of

these ghost-haunted hours might we have saved her! I may be spinning

thin air, yet I think what I tell is true."

But Stapledon was glaring at the impassive face before him with a gaze

that seemed to burrow through Mark's sightless eyes and reach his brain.

Now Myles spoke in a voice unfamiliar to his listener, for it was

loud-pitched and turbulent with sudden passion.

"That man killed my child!"

A glass vessel 90 the dresser echoed the deep, dominant note of this cry

and reverberated it; one moment of silence followed; and then came

shuffle of feet on the flagged way, with laughter and echo of time-worn

jests, as Churdles Ash, Pinsent, and the others returned from their

pleasure. Mark Endicott, however, had opportunity for a final word.

"It may be as you say--a dark accident, and worse ten thousand times for

him than even you. Be just--be very just to the madman, if he has

really done this wayward deed and is coming back into your life again.

Be just, and don't swerve an inch out of your even-handed course, for

your road is like to get difficult if you do."

"Us have viewed a gert pomp of braave horsemanship," announced Mr. Ash.

"Never seed no better riders nor merry-men nowheer, though the hosses

was poor."

"An' Tommy Bates here be all for joinin' of 'em," laughed Samuel

Pinsent; "but I tell un as he turns out his toes tu far to do any credit

to hisself in such a wild course of life."

*CHAPTER XII.*

*LIGHT*

Beside his sleeping wife did Stapledon recline, and endeavoured, through

the hours of a weary night, to gather the significance of those great

things that he had gleaned. Sometimes he surprised his own thought--as

a man's conscience will often burst in roughly upon his mind--and found

himself hoping that this news was untrue and that Christopher Yeoland

filled a coffin, if not at Little Silver. But the edifice of

probability so carefully reared by Mark Endicott showed no flaw, and

even amid the mazes of his present doubt Myles found time to marvel at

the ratiocination of the old man. Before this explanation it seemed

difficult to believe that another clue to the puzzle existed. A note of

inner unrest, a question within a question, finally brought Myles out of

bed at dawn. He rose, soon stood in the air, and, through the familiar

early freshness of day, walked upwards to the Moor for comfort. What

was it to him if this harebrained soul had thus played at death? He, at

least, was no dreamer, and moved upon solid ground. He passed beside

the kingdom of the blue jasione and navel-wort on the old wall, while

above him wind-worn beeches whispered in the dawn wind. From force of

habit he stood at a gate and rested his arms upon the topmost bar, while

his great dog roved for a rabbit. Now the man's eyes were lighted to

the depths of their disquiet from the east, and at sight of the distant

woods his thoughts turned back to that meeting responsible for his

child's death. He had yet to learn from Honor whether his uncle's

suspicion was correct concerning the incident, but little doubt existed

within his mind, and he breathed heavily, and his emotions almost

bordered upon malignity. Better such a futile soul under the earth in

sober earnest. So ill-regulated a human machine looked worse than

useless, for his erratic course impeded the progress of others more

potent, and was itself a menace and a danger. This man had killed his

little son--that child of many petitions and wide hopes; had crushed

him, like a sweet wild flower under the heel of a fool. So bitterly he

brooded; then pondered as to how his wife would receive this tremendous

message.

Upon the first heather ridges the cold breath of the Moor touched the

man to patience and brought him nearer himself. He looked out into the

dayspring; noted where one little flame-coloured forerunner of dawn

already shone upon lofty granite afar off; and saw the Mist Mother rise

from the ruddy seeding rushes of her sleeping-place. He beheld the

ancient heron's grey pinion brighten to rose beside the river; heard cry

of curlew and all the manifold music of the world waking again. Above

him the sky flushed to the colours of the woodbine, while upon earth

arose an incense and a savour of nightly dews sun-kissed. From marsh

and moss, from the rush beds and the peat beds; from glimmering ridges

cast upward by workers long gone by; from the bracken and the heather,

and the cairns of the old stone men; from the gold eyes of the little

tormentils, the blue eyes of the milkworts, the white stars of the

galiums woven and interwoven through the texture of the budding

heath--from each and all, to the horizon-line of peak and pinnacle, a

risen sun won worship. Then did Stapledon's eyes soften somewhat and

his brow clear in the great light, for there came songs from the Sons of

the Morning--they who in time past had welcomed him as a brother; and

their music, floating from the high places, soothed his troubled heart.

Under that seraphic melody the life of man, his joys and his sorrows,

peaked and dwindled to their just proportions; gradually he forgot his

kind, and so thought only of the solemn world-order outspread, and the

round earth rolling like an opal about the lamp of the sun, through

God's own estate and seigniory of space.

That hour and the steadfast nature of him presently retrieved his

patience; then Myles shone forth unclouded as the morning. Recollection

of his recent fret and passion surprised him. Who was he to exhibit

such emotion? The Moor was his exemplar, and had been so since his

boyish eyes first swept it understandingly. For him this huge, untamed

delight was the only picture of the God he did not know, yet yearned to

know; and now, as oftentimes of old, it cooled his blood, exalted his

reflections, adjusted the distortions of life's wry focus, and sent him

home in peace.

Duty was the highest form of praise that he knew, and he prepared to

fall back upon that. Let others order their brief journeys on lines

fantastical or futile, he at least was wiser and knew better. He

reflected that the folly of the world can injure no soul's vital spots.

Only a man's self can wound himself mortally. He would live on agreeably

to Nature--obedient as the granite to the soft, tireless touch of wind

and rain; prompt as the bursting bud and uncurling tendril; patient as

the cave spirits that build up pillars of stalagmite through unnumbered

ages; faithful as the merle, whose music varies not from generation to

generation. Life so lived would be life well guarded and beyond the

power of outer evil to penetrate.

So he believed very earnestly, and knew not that his noble theory asked

a noble nature to practise it. Only a great man can use perfectly a

great tool; and this obtains with higher rules of conduct than

Stapledon's; for of all who profess and call themselves Christians, not

one in a thousand is mentally equipped to be the thing he pretends, or

even to understand the sweep and scope of what he professes. It is not

roguery that makes three parts of Christendom loom hypocrite in a

thinker's eyes, but mental and constitutional inability to grasp a

gospel at once the most spiritual and material ever preached and

misunderstood. Centuries of craft stretch between man and the Founder's

meaning; confusion bred of passion has divided the House against itself;

politics and the lust of power have turned religion into a piece of

state machinery; and the rot at the root of the cumbrous fabric will,

within half a century, bring all down in far-flung conflagration and

ruin. Then may arise the immortal part out of the holocaust of the

Letter, and Christianity, purged of churchcraft as from a pestilence,

fly back to brood upon the human heart once more in the primal, rainbow

glory of the Sermon on the Mount, preached under heaven by a Man to men.

That day Myles Stapledon, with all caution and such choice of words as

he had at command, broke the story to Honor, and his tactful language,

born of love, was so skilful that the shock brought no immediate

collapse with it. The narrative asked for some art, yet he developed it

gradually, and found his reward where Mark had predicted. First Honor

learnt what she herself had seen upon that fateful night; and when, in a

very extremity of amazement, she confessed to the secret of a fancied

spectre, Myles went further and led her to understand that what she had

witnessed was flesh and blood, that a confusion, probably not

intentional, had been created, and that Christopher Yeoland might be

suspected still to live. Stapledon spared himself nothing in this

narrative. Asked by his wife as to the reason that could have prompted

her former lover to a step so extravagant, he reminded her of her own

determination to marry neither of them; he explained how he had begged

Christopher to come back, that her life might be as it had been; and

added that doubtless the wanderer on his side, and for love of her

alone, had put this trick upon them in the belief that such a course

would contribute to her final happiness. Having set out this much with

extreme impartiality, a human question burst from the heart of the man.

"For you he did this thing, love; he only thought of you and not of the

thousand preposterous tangles and troubles likely to spring from such an

action. Your happiness--that was all he saw or cared to see. And did

he see it? Tell me, dear Honor--here on the threshold of his return

perhaps--tell me; was it for your happiness? Thank God, I think I know;

yet I should like to hear from your own lips the truth and that I am

right."

The truth, as she believed it before this most startling fact, came

instantly to Honor's lips. She was enfeebled and unstrung by weeks of

wayward living consequent upon great fret of mind. She had nursed this

dreadful belief in an apparition until it had grown into a sort of real

presence, and the conviction, fabricated through weeks of brooding,

would not be dispelled at a word. Deep was the impress left upon her

mind, and time must pass before a shape so clear could fade. As a

result, the man now thought to be returned from the dead frightened her

for a season, scarcely less than his fancied ghost had done. She was

timid before the amazing whisper that he still lived. In this fear she

forgot for the moment what had prompted Yeoland to his typical folly;

she dreaded him in the body as she had dreaded him in the spirit; she

turned to the solid being at her side, clung to Myles in her weakness,

and held his great arm tightly round her waist.

"For my happiness indeed, dearest one. You have loved me better than I

deserved, and forgiven so many faults. This makes me shiver and grow

cold and fear to be alone; yet how different to the thing I thought!"

"And he may come home."

"He will never be real to me again--not if I see him and hear him.

Never so real as there---grey-clad with the moon on his face--a shadowy

part of the great web of the night, yet distinct--all very ghost. I'm

frightened still. You can forgive a little of what I made you endure,

now that you know what I have suffered."

He hugged her up to his heart at these words, believed her as thoroughly

as she believed herself, and thanked Heaven that blind Mark Endicott had

been led to such a true prophecy.

A week passed, yet no step was taken, though the new position came to be

accepted gradually by those acquainted with the secret. For Honor the

knowledge was actually health-giving by virtue of the morbid cloud that

it dispelled. Such tidings liberated her soul from a strange fear and

offered her mind a subject of boundless interest. Many plans were

proposed, yet scarcely a desirable course of action presented itself.

Mark advocated no step, and Honor added her plea to his, for she openly

expressed a hope that Christopher, if still he lived, would not return

to Godleigh. And this she said upon no suspicion of herself, but rather

from a continued dread of the man. It seemed impossible to her that she

could ever think of him as among the living. Stapledon, on the contrary,

desired an explanation, and his wish was gratified most speedily by an

unexpected herald from Yeoland himself. An authentic representative

arrived at Endicott's--a somewhat shame-faced and apologetic messenger

laden with the facts.

For, upon a morning in August, Doctor Courteney Clack appeared, desired

to see Mr. Endicott alone, and not only told the blind man that his

theory was in the main correct, but begged that from the stores of his

common sense and wisdom he would indicate the most seemly and least

sensational means by which this news might be broken to those concerned.

The doctor did not pretend to excuse himself or his part in the play.

There was, indeed, no necessity for recrimination or censure. The

future lay at the door, and Christopher Yeoland, who had, in truth,

haunted his own domain by night, designed to return to it in earnest

during the autumn. The temporary lease would then terminate, and

circumstances now enabled the owner to free his land of every

encumbrance and henceforth administer Godleigh in a manner worthy of its

traditions.

The interview was an old man's triumph, for Mark Endicott, too frank to

pretend otherwise, gloried in the relation of the story long afterwards,

loved to dwell upon his own reasoned synthesis and explain how closely

it fitted the revealed facts, despite their rare singularity. As for

Courteney Clack, that gentleman's amazement, when he found his

intelligence more than a fortnight old, may be guessed, but can hardly

be stated. Mr. Endicott sent for Myles to substantiate him, and finally

the astounded physician unfolded his own narrative, now shrunk to a tame

and trivial thing--an echo for the most part of Mark's deductions.

On reaching Australia with Stapledon's messages the physician's first

professional duty had been at the bedside of Christopher's ancient

kinsman, with whom the young man was dwelling. For only two days after

Doctor Clack's arrival, the old wool dealer was bitten by a whip-snake

at his country seat on the Hawkesbury River, and there passed speedily

out of life. This fact combined with Clack's news from home to

determine Christopher Yeoland in the action he had taken, and the

scheme, once adumbrated upon young Yeoland's mind, grew apace. The dead

man, who was also named Christopher, proved to be very wealthy, and his

money, willed to assist the establishment of technical schools in

Sydney, had been withdrawn from that purpose after two months'

intercourse with the youthful head of the race. Thus, in ignorance of

his own near exit, the elder left it within Christopher's power to

redeem the ancestral forests and roof tree in fulness of time. Apart

from the imposition, built on the fact of his relative's sudden death,

the traveller had already determined that he should lie in the family

grave at home. It was the right place for one who had saved Yeoland

credit at the last gasp and given the head of that family wherewithal to

lift honour from the dust. Then came Stapledon's message and Clack's

fearless gloss; so that, with wits quickened and a mind enlarged by his

own unexpected good fortune, Christopher made final sacrifice of all

love hope--a renunciation worthy of honest praise in sight of his own

altered circumstances--and, with Clack's aid, practised his theatrical

imposition that Honor's road might stretch before her straight and

certain. Nothing less than his death would decide her, and so he let

the implicit lie be told, and determined with himself at all cost to

keep out of his own country until expiration of the period for which he

had let Godleigh.

Clack indicated a circumstance in itself satisfactory at this stage in

his story. Christopher's resurrection would not practically prove so

far-reaching as Mark Endicott and Stapledon had imagined, for none

existed with any right to question the facts. On the supposed death of

the owner, Godleigh had reverted to a man of the same name in

Australia--that was all the lawyers knew--and the legal difficulty of

reclaiming his own and re-establishing his rights promised to be but

trifling. Neither had the law very serious penalties in pickle for him,

because it could not be showed where Christopher had wronged any man.

Time passed, and even the limits of patience that he had set himself

were too great for Yeoland of Godleigh. Now he was rich, and hated

Australia with a deep hatred. He returned home therefore, and those

events related had fallen almost act for act as Endicott declared. In

the flesh had the man haunted Godleigh. Once a keeper nearly captured

him upon his own preserves; once, during the past spring, he had crept

to the great beech tree, impelled thither at the same hour and moment as

his old sweetheart. Her collapse had frightened him out of his senses,

and, on seeing Stapledon approaching, he had retreated, concealed

himself, and, upon their departure, returned to his hidden horse. Deeply

perturbed, but ignorant of all that the incident really signified, he

had ridden back that night to Exeter, and so departed to the Continent,

there to dwell unrecognised a while longer, and wait, half in hope, half

in fear, that Honor might proclaim him.

But no sound reached his ear, and of Little Silver news neither he nor

Courteney Clack had learnt anything of note for many weeks. Now,

however, with only two months between himself and his return to

Godleigh, Christopher Yeoland felt the grand imposture must be blown

away. It had at least served his purpose.

Thus spoke Clack; then his own curiosity was satisfied, and he learned

how, by the lawless operation of obscure men, that secret hidden in the

churchyard had become known, and how, upon the confession of one

conspirator, three others beside the two discoverers had come to hear of

it.

"And as for that terrible thing--the child killed by him

accidentally--my child--" said Stapledon without emotion, "little use

tearing a tender-hearted creature with that to no purpose. I do not

want him to know it."

"I won't tell him, you may be sure," answered the doctor, still in a

dream before this unexpected discounting of his great intelligence. "He

will not hear of it from me. But know he must sooner or later. That

can't be spared him. Only a question of time and some blurted speech."

"I'll tell him, then," declared Myles. "There's nobody more fitting. I

don't forget."

The question next arose as to how Little Silver should be informed, and

Mr. Endicott declared that the vicar must make a formal announcement

after morning service on the following Sunday. Then, with further

conversation upon minor points, Doctor Clack's great confession ended;

while as for the matter of the desecration, he held with Mr. Endicott

that no notice need be taken beyond, perhaps, warning Mr. Cramphorn that

his egregious enterprise was known, and that his own safety rested in

silence.

The doctor stopped a few days at Endicott's; saw Honor, who heard him

with deep interest and decreasing fear; then wrote at length to

Christopher in London; but, not caring to face the publication of

Yeoland's existence and pending return, Clack finally took himself off

until the sensation was on the wane. Before he set out, Myles had a

private conversation with him in nature comforting enough, for,

concerning Honor, the medical man gave it as his professional opinion

that this counter-shock would serve adequately to combat her former

hopeless, nerveless condition. The truth, despite its startling nature,

must bring wide relief from spiritual terrors, and so probably

participate in and hasten the business of recovery.

Then came the thunder-clap, whose echoes reverberated in journals even

to the great metropolitan heart of things, and Christopher Yeoland

achieved a notoriety that was painful to him beyond power of words to

express. Only one gleam of satisfaction shone through all the notes and

comments and unnumbered reasons for his conduct: not one came nearer the

truth than the utterance of a West Country journalist, who knew the

history of the Yeoland family, and opined that a touch of hereditary

eccentricity was responsible for all.

Of Little Silver, its comments, theories, bewilderment, and general

suspicion that there must be something rotten at the roots of the world

while such deeds could be, there appears no need to discourse. How Ash

and his kind reviewed the matter, or with what picturesque force it

appealed to Noah Brimblecombe, janitor of the mausoleum, may easily be

imagined; while for the rest it would be specially interesting, if

pertinent, to describe the emotions of Jonah Cramphorn. Relief and

disappointment mingled in his mind; he had made no history after all; he

was not the mainspring of this commotion, and when he nodded darkly and

showed no surprise, folks merely held him too conceited to display

honest amazement like everybody else, and laughed at his assumption of

secret knowledge. There came a night, however, when Mr. Endicott spoke

with him in private, after which Jonah desired nothing more than silence

for himself, and poured his pent-up chagrin and annoyance upon Charity

Grepe, who--poor soul--derived little lustre from this resurrection.

*BOOK III.*

*CHAPTER I.*

*VANESSA IO*

Between Bear Down and the valley was fern and the breath of fern and

great gleam and drone of summer flies under the living sun. Here Teign

tumbled through deep gorges, and from the wind-swept granite of Godleigh

hill, beneath unclouded noonday splendour, acres of bracken panted

silver-green in the glare, dipped to the fringes of the woods below, and

shone like a shield of light upon the bosom of the acclivity. At

river-level spread a forest, where oak and alder, larch and pinnacles of

pine shimmered in the haze. Dark shadows broke the manifold planes of

them, and the song of the river beneath, with lull and rise on the lazy

summer breeze, murmured from mossy granite stairways twining through the

woods. Here shone masses of king fern, twinkled jewels of honeysuckle,

and the deep, pink blossoms of eglantine. The atmosphere was very dry;

the leaves on a little white poplar clapped their hands to the river

melody; hirundines wheeled and cried in the upper blue, and there lacked

not other signs, all dearer than rainbows to a farmer whose corn is

ripe, of fine weather and its continuance.

In the shadow of a great stone upon the hillside, where, beneath the

fairy forest of the fern, sad grasses robbed of sunlight seeded feebly,

and wood strawberries gemmed the under-green, sat Honor Stapledon alone.

Upon one hand sloped bare descents, already blistered somewhat by a hot

July, patched with rusty colour where the heather had been roasted under

the eye of the sun, painted with tawny, thirsty foliage, brightened by

the blue spires of viper's bugloss, starred with pink of centauries. A

great bramble bore red fruit and pale blossom together; and here

butterflies made dancing, glancing gleam and tangle of colour as they

came and went, flashed hither and thither, or settled to sun themselves

on the flowers and rocks. One--_Vanessa Io_--feared nothing, and

pursued his business and pleasure upon the bramble within a few inches

of Honor's cheek.

As yet Christopher Yeoland had not plucked courage to return publicly,

but that morning came rumours from Little Silver that he was upon a

visit to Godleigh, as guest of the departing tenant. Noah Brimblecombe

had actually seen him and mentioned the fact to Mr. Cramphorn. Honor,

therefore, expecting an early visit, and feeling quite unequal to such

an experience now that it had come so near--desiring moreover that Myles

and not herself should first welcome the wanderer--had stolen away to

the adjacent hillside, there to pass some hours with a book. But her

thoughts proved of a nature more interesting than verses. Indeed they

lacked not poetry and even images to be described as startling, for the

matter was dramatic and sufficiently sensational to fire a less

imaginative mind. So her book remained unopened, and she watched

_Vanessa Io_, though her thoughts were not with him.

While Stapledon had grasped the fact of Christopher's continued

existence and pending return somewhat sooner than his wife, the

positions a month later seemed reversed. He faced the upheaval on the

first proclamation, and she shrank from it with emotion bred from her

recent terror; but now it was Honor who discussed affairs in the calmer

spirit, and Myles who changed the subject, not always without

impatience. The woman's frank interest daily grew, and she saw no cause

to hide it; while the man, whose mind had been jolted from the rut of

accepted things, now felt a desire to return into it and found himself

come near resentment of this wonder. Such a tremendous circumstance

hung over his days like a cloud, for it meant more to him than anybody,

so at least he believed at that season. Stapledon's intellect was of a

sort likely to be impatient at such monkey tricks. He found all the

solid building of the past, all the logical sequences of events and

movements leading to possession of Honor, tumbled into ruins around him.

To his order-loving nature the skein of life grew in some measure

tangled before such sleight and jugglery. Though he strove hard to keep

in sight the sure knowledge that Yeoland had played his part for love of

Honor, yet indignation would now and then awake to burn in him; and that

first spark of passion, lighted when he thought of his child, after the

earliest confession from Henry Collins, was not as yet wholly

extinguished. Now, while the return of the wanderer came nearer, Myles

shook himself into a resolute attitude and told himself that the

uncertain depths and shallows of his own emotions must be discovered and

his future line of conduct determined, as Mark Endicott had forewarned

him. But while he stood thus, in unfamiliar moods of doubt, Honor,

contrariwise, from a standpoint almost approaching superstitious fear,

was come to accept the truth and accept it thankfully. The tremendous

mental excitement, the shock and clash of thoughts afforded by this

event, possessed some tonic faculty for her, and, as Doctor Clack had

predicted, wrought more good than harm within her nature. For a little

while she had wept after the first wave of fear was passed; she had wept

and wondered in secret at the snarling cruelty of chance that willed

this man, of all men, to rob her of her baby treasure; but the thought

of his sorrow when the truth should reach him lessened her own.

The reason for Christopher's conduct Honor had of course learned. That

much Myles set out for her with the most luminous words at his command;

and he smarted even while he told of the other's renunciation and

self-sacrifice. He explained many times how for love of her Yeoland

departed and let it be imagined that he was no more; how, from

conviction that her happiness was wound up with her present husband, he

had done this thing. Myles strove to live in an atmosphere of naked

truth at this season, for his instinct told him that the way was strange

and that salvation only lay in stripping off it every cloud or tissue of

unreality.

As for Mark Endicott, from mere human interest at an event beyond

experience, he passed to estimate and appraisement of Christopher's

deeds. Averse from every sort of deception, he yet found himself unable

to judge hardly before the motives and the character of the first puppet

in this tragi-comedy. Yeoland had meant well in the past, and the only

question for the future was his own sentiments toward Honor. That these

justified him in his return to Godleigh Mr. Endicott nothing doubted.

He recollected the somewhat peculiar emotional characteristics of the

man and felt no cause for fear, save in the matter of Myles.

As for Little Silver, intelligence that their squire, resuscitated in

life and pocket, was returning to his own filled most hearts with lively

satisfaction after the first amazement had sobered. Recollection of his

generosity awakened; whereon the fathers of the village met in conclave

and determined to mark their great man's home-coming with some sort of

celebration, if only a bonfire upon the hill-top and some special

broaching of beer-barrels.

Honor moved her parasol a little, mused on time to come, and wished the

ordeal of meeting with Christopher behind her. The chapter of their

personal romance was sealed and buried in the past, and her feelings

were not fluttered as she looked back. The interest lay ahead. She

thought of the life he had lived since last they met, and wondered what

women had come into it--whether one above all others now filled it for

him. She hoped with her whole heart that it might be so, and sat so

quiet, with her mind full of pictures and possibilities for him, that

_Vanessa Io_ settled within a foot of her and opened and shut his wings

and thanked the sun, as a flower thanks him for his warmth, by display

of beauty. His livery caught the thinker and brought her mind back

behind her eyes so that she noted the insect's attire, the irregular

outline of his pinions, their dull brick-red and ebony, brown margins,

and staring eyes all touched and lighted with lilac, crimson, yellow,

and white. Within this splendid motley the little body of him was

wrapped in velvet, and as he turned about upon a bramble flower his

trunk, like a tiny trembling watch-spring, passed to the honeyed heart

of the blossom. Then he arose and joined the colour-dance of small blue

butterflies from the heath, of sober fritillaries, and other of his own

Vanessa folk--tortoise-shells, great and small, and a gorgeous red

admiral in black and scarlet.

Far beneath a horn suddenly sounded, and the music of otter-hounds arose

melodious from the hidden valley. Flight of blue wood-pigeons and cackle

of a startled woodpecker marked the progress of the hunt. Here and

there, with shouts and cries, came glint of a throng through the trees

that concealed them. Then Honor heard the grander utterance of an

elderly foxhound who was assisting the pack. He had suddenly lighted on

the scent of his proper prey, and a moment later she saw him away on his

own account, climbing the opposite hill at speed. His music died, and

the clamour beneath soon dwindled and sank until a last note of the

horn, mellowed by distance, slowly faded away. But Honor was

uninterested, for the modern fashion of otter-hunting at noon instead of

grey dawn, though it may promise the presence of fair maidens at a meet,

holds forth small likelihood of otters, who are but seldom slain upon

these lazy runs.

Then the sound of a step sprang out of the silence, and the woman turned

and drew breath at sight of Christopher Yeoland, standing knee-deep in

the fern behind her. He was clad as when she saw him last, in grey

country wear; and to her first startled glance he seemed unchanged.

"Never pass a parasol without looking under it, if I can," he said; and

then, before she could rise, he had flung himself beside her and taken

her left hand and squeezed it gently between his. Her other hand went

unconsciously towards her breast, but now she lowered it into his and

suffered the greeting she had no power to speak, be uttered by that

pressure of palm on palm.

"What tremendous, tragic things we ought to whisper at this moment," he

said; "yet, for the life of me, I can only think of a single question:

Have you forgiven me for my far-reaching fool's trick? If you haven't,

I can't live at Godleigh under the shadow of Endicott's frown. And I

certainly can't live anywhere else, so, should you refuse to pardon, I

must die in real earnest."

"If anybody can forgive you, it is I, Christopher. Oh dear--I am glad we

are over this meeting. It has made me feel so strange, so curious. It

seems only yesterday that I saw you last; and I could laugh, now that

you are alive once more, to think your spirit had power to frighten

me--or anybody. Yet I do not quite believe I shall ever feel that you

are flesh and blood again."

"It will take time. I began to doubt myself when I came home and stole

about in the old haunts, and felt how ghosts feel. Once a keeper chased

me out of Godleigh, and I only escaped by the skin of my teeth! Thrice

I saw you--at your window in moonlight, and driving with your husband,

and--the last time."

His voice faltered; she saw tears in his eyes and knew that he had

learned of the misfortune in the wood. The fact pleased her, in that

this sorrow was bound to come to him and now it would not be necessary

for Myles to speak about the past. A moment of silence passed between

them, and she looked at Christopher softly and saw him unchanged. Every

feature and expression, every trick of voice and gesture was even as it

used to be. She knew his careless tie, his jerk of head, his habit of

twisting up the corner of his moustache and then biting it.

"How wonderful this is!" she said, not heeding his broken sentence.

"How mysterious to think I sit here talking to a man I have believed for

two years to be dead! And yet each moment my heart grows calmer and my

pulse beats more quietly."

"Things are always commonplace when you expect them to be theatrical and

rise to fine, giddy heights. That's the difference between plays and

real life. Chance works up to her great situations and then often

shirks them in the most undramatic and disappointing way. But when she

does want a situation, she just pitches people headlong into it--like

our meeting at the old tryst by the beech. Memory took me there; what

took you? God forgive me, I----"

"Leave that," she said quickly. "It can't be talked about. Have you

seen Myles or Uncle Mark yet?"

"No; a proper attraction brought me here, and somehow I knew that I

should find you. But I long to meet him too--your husband. It's a

blessing to know that among the many who blame me he won't be counted.

Please Heaven, I shall see a great deal of you both in the future. I

always loved the west wind best, because it blew over Bear Down before

it came to me. Sunshine ahead, I hope, and some for me. I've come home

to be happy."

"Have you found a wife?"

"Honor!--No, I haven't looked for one. Godleigh's my wife. And I must

set about spending some money on her, now I've got plenty. So

strange--that lonely old cadet of our family. He was, I thought, as

poor as a church mouse. Three parts of a miser, and lived hard and

laughed at luxuries, as so many do who have had to make their own

fortunes. Money-grubbing carries that curse along with it, that it

often turns the grubber blind and deaf to all save the sight and clink

of the hateful, necessary stuff. But the dear old boy somehow warmed to

me; and I drew pictures of home for him; and he promised to come home

and see me some day when he grew old. He was seventy-three then, but

utterly refused to accept the fact. Then death suddenly rushed him, in

the shape of a whip-snake, and dying, his thoughts turned home, and it

was his wish, not my whim, that he should lie there. That put my plot

into my head, for he was of the same name. Not until after his death

did I know he had altered his will; and I can tell you, seeing the style

he lived in and the size of his ideas, that I was staggered when I found

he had left me a real fortune. That's my adventure--a mere bit of a

story-book, yet a very pleasant bit to the hero of it."

_Vanessa Io_ returned, and so still sat Honor that he settled boldly

upon the sun-kissed folds of her skirt.

"Do you remember how I used to say you were all butterfly, though in

grave moments you rather claimed for yourself the qualities of staid and

sober twilight things--solemn beetles, whose weight of wing-case reminds

them that life is real and earnest?"

"You were right upon the whole. I've got the same spirit in me as that

little, gaudy, self-complacent atom there, opening and shutting his

wings, like a fairy's picture-book upon your knee. Our rule of life is

the same. I only hope he's having more luck with his existence than I

have had with mine."

She reflected a moment. This was the first hint of his own sorrows in

the past, of the price he had paid.

"But I'm not changed, for all the world of experiences that separates

us," he continued quickly. "I'm only a thought older. Time is

beginning to do a little gradual work in grey just above my ears. So

delicate and apologetic and gentle he is that I can't grumble. Is Mr.

Endicott well?"

"Very well."

"And Myles and the farm?"

"Both flourishing abundantly, I believe."

"And to think the sadness on your face is solely of my bringing--yet you

can welcome me after what I have done!"