Under conditions of spring and summer Newtake Farm flattered Will’s hopes not a little.  He worked like a giant, appropriated some of that credit belonging to fine weather, and viewed the future with very considerable tranquillity.  Of beasts he purchased wisely, being guided in that matter by Mr. Lyddon; but for the rest he was content to take his own advice.  Already his ambition extended beyond the present limits of his domain; already he contemplated the possibility of reclaiming some of the outlying waste and enlarging his borders.  If the Duchy might spread greedy fingers and inclose “newtakes,” why not the Venville tenants?  Many besides Will asked themselves that question; the position was indeed fruitful of disputes in various districts, especially on certain questions involving cattle; and no moorland Quarter breathed forth greater discontent against the powers than that of which Chagford was the central parish.

Sam Bonus, inspired by his master’s sanguine survey of life, toiled amain, believed all that Will predicted, and approved each enterprise he planned; while as for Chris, in due time she settled at Newtake and undertook woman’s work there with her customary thoroughness and energy.  To her lot fell the poultry, the pair of fox-hound puppies that Will undertook to keep for the neighbouring hunt, and all the interior economy and control of the little household.

On Sundays Phoebe heard of the splendid doings at Newtake; upon which she envied Chris her labours, and longed to be at Will’s right hand.  For the present, however, Miller Lyddon refused his daughter permission even to visit the farm; and she obeyed, despite her husband’s indignant protests.

Thus matters stood while the sun shone brightly from summer skies.  Will, when he visited Chagford market, talked to the grizzled farmers, elaborated his experience, shook his head or nodded it knowingly as they, in their turn, discussed the business of life, paid due respect to their wisdom, and offered a little of his own in exchange for it.  That the older men lacked pluck was his secret conviction.  The valley folk were braver; but the upland agriculturists, all save himself, went in fear.  Their eyes were careworn, their caution extreme; behind the summer they saw another shadow forever moving; and the annual struggle with those ice-bound or water-logged months of the early year, while as yet the Moor had nothing for their stock, left them wearied and spiritless when the splendour of the summer came.  They farmed furtively, snatching at such good as appeared, distrusting their own husbandry, fattening the land with reluctance, cowering under the shadow of withered hopes and disappointments too numerous to count.  Will pitied this mean spirit and, unfamiliar with wet autumns and hard winters on the high land, laughed at his fellow-countrymen.  But they were kind and bid him be cautious and keep his little nest-egg snug.

“Tie it up in stout leather, my son,” said a farmer from Gidleigh.  “Ay, an’ fasten the bag wi’ a knot as’ll take ‘e half an hour to undo; an’ remember, the less you open it, the better for your peace of mind.”

All of which good counsel Blanchard received with expressions of gratitude, yet secretly held to be but the croaking of a past generation, stranded far behind that wave of progress on which he himself was advancing crest-high.

It happened one evening, when Clement Hicks visited Newtake to go for a walk under the full moon with Chris, that he learnt she was away for a few days.  This fact had been mentioned to Clement; but he forgot it, and now found himself here, with only Will and Sam Bonus for company.  He accepted the young farmer’s invitation to supper, and the result proved unlucky in more directions than one.  During this meal Clem railed in surly vein against the whole order of things as it affected himself, and made egotistical complaint as to the hardness of life; then, when his host began to offer advice, he grew savage and taunted Will with his own unearned good fortune.  Blanchard, weary after a day of tremendous physical exertion, made sharp answer.  He felt his old admiration for Clem Hicks much lessened of late, and it nettled him not a little that his friend should thus attribute his present position to the mere accident of a windfall.  He was heartily sick of the other’s endless complaints, and now spoke roughly and to the point.

“What the devil’s the gude of this eternal bleat?  You’m allus snarlin’ an’ gnashin’ your teeth ‘gainst God, like a rat bitin’ the stick that’s killin’ it.”

“And why should God kill me?  You’ve grown so wise of late, perhaps you know.”

“Why shouldn’t He?  Why shouldn’t He kill you, or any other man, if He wants the room of un for a better?  Not that I believe parson’s stuff more ‘n you; but grizzlin’ your guts to fiddlestrings won’t mend your fortune.  Best to put your time into work, ‘stead o’ talk same as me an’ Bonus.  And as for my money, you knaw right well if theer’d been two thousand ’stead of wan, I’d have shared it with Chris.”

“Easy to say!  If there had been two, you would have said, ’If it was only four’!  That’s human nature.”

“Ban’t my nature, anyway, to tell a lie!” burst out Will.

“Perhaps it’s your nature to do worse.  What were you about last Christmas?”

Blanchard set down knife and fork and looked the other in the face.  None had heard this, for Bonus, his meal ended, went off to the little tallet over a cattle-byre which was his private apartment.

“You’d rip that up again you, who swore never to open’ your mouth upon it?”

“You’re frightened now.”

“Not of you, anyway.  But you’d best not to come up here no more.  I’m weary of you; I don’t fear you worse than a blind worm; but such as you are, you’ve grawed against me since my luck comed.  I wish Chris would drop you as easy as I can, for you’m teachin’ her to waste her life, same as you waste yours.”

“Very well, I’ll go.  We’re enemies henceforth, since you wish it so.”

“Blamed if you ban’t enough to weary Job!  ‘Enemies’!  It’s like a child talkin’.  ‘Enemies’!  D’you think I care a damn wan way or t’other?  You’m so bad as Jan Grimbal wi’ his big play-actin’ talk.  He’m gwaine to cut my tether some day.  P’r’aps you’ll go an’ help un to do it!  The past is done, an’ no man who weern’t devil all through would go back on such a oath as you sweared to me.  An’ you won’t.  As to what’s to come, you can’t hurt a straight plain-dealer, same as me, though you’m free an’ welcome to try if you please to.”

“The future may take care of itself; and for your straight speaking I’ll give you mine.  Go your way and I’ll go my way; but until you beg my forgiveness for this night’s talk I’ll never cross your threshold again, or speak to you, or think of you.”

Clement rose from his unfinished food, picked up his hat, and vanished, and Will, dismissing the matter with a toss of his head and a contemptuous expiration of breath, gave the poet’s plate of cold potato and bacon to a sheep-dog and lighted his pipe.

Not ten hours later, while yet some irritation at the beekeeper’s spleen troubled Blanchard’s thoughts as he laboured upon his land, a voice saluted him from the highway and he saw a friend.

“An’ gude-marnin’ to you, Martin.  Another braave day, sure ’nough.  Climb awver the hedge.  You’m movin’ early.  Ban’t eight o’clock.”

“I’m off to the ‘Grey Wethers,’ those old ruined circles under Sittaford Tor, you know.  But I meant a visit to you as well.  Bonus was in the farmyard and brought me with him.”

“Ess fay, us works, I tell ‘e.  We’m fightin’ the rabbits now.  The li’l varmints have had it all theer way tu long; but this wire netting’ll keep ’em out the corn next year an’ the turnips come autumn.  How be you fearin’?  I aint seen ’e this longful time.”

“Well, thank you; and as busy as you in my way.  I’m going to write a book about the Dartmoor stones.”

“’S truth!  Be you?  Who’ll read it?”

“Don’t know yet.  And, after all, I have found out little that sharper eyes haven’t discovered already.  Still, it fills my time.  And it is that I’m here about.”

“You can go down awver my land to the hut-circles an’ welcome whenever you mind to.”

“Sure of it, and thank you; but it’s another thing just now your brother-in-law to be.  I think perhaps, if he has leisure, he might be useful to me.  A very clever fellow, Hicks.”

But Will was in no humour to hear Clement praised just then, or suggest schemes for his advancement.

“He’m a weak sapling of a man, if you ax me.  Allus grumblin’, an’ soft wi’ it as I knaw none better,” said Blanchard, watching Bonus struggle with the rabbit netting.

“He’s out of his element, I think a student a bookish man, like myself.”

“As like you as chalk’s like cheese no more.  His temper, tu!  A bull in spring’s a fule to him.  I’m weary of him an’ his cleverness.”

“You see, if I may venture to say so, Chris ”

“I knaw all ’bout that.  ‘Tis like your gudeness to try an’ put a li’l money in his pocket wi’out stepping on his corns.  They ’m tokened.  Young people ‘s so muddle-headed.  Bees indeed!  Nice things to keep a wife an’ bring up a fam’ly on!  An’ he do nothin’ but write rhymes, an’ tear ’em up again, an’ cuss his luck, wi’out tryin’ to mend it.  I thought something of un wance, when I was no more ’n a bwoy, but as I get up in years I see the emptiness of un.”

“He would grow happy and sweeter-hearted if he could marry your sister.”

“Not him!  Of course, if it’s got to be, it will be.  I ban’t gwaine to see Chris graw into an auld maid.  An’ come bimebye, when I’ve saved a few hunderd, I shall set ’em up myself.  But she’s makin’ a big mistake, an’, to a friend, I doan’t mind tellin’ ’e ’tis so.”

“I hope you’re wrong.  They’ll be happy together.  They have great love each for the other.  But, of course, that’s nothing to do with me.  I merely want Hicks to undertake some clerical work for me, as a matter of business, and I thought you might tell me the best way to tackle him without hurting his feelings.  He’s a proud man, I fancy.”

“Ess; an’ pride’s a purty fulish coat for poverty, ban’t it?  I’ve gived that man as gude advice as ever I gived any man; but what’s well-thought-out wisdom to the likes of him?  Get un a job if you mind to.  I shouldn’t not till he shaws better metal and grips the facts o’ life wi’ a tighter hand.”

“I’ll sound him as delicately as I can.  It may be that his self-respect would strengthen if he found his talents appreciated and able to command a little money.  He wants something of that sort eh?”

“Doan’t knaw but what a hiding wouldn’t be so gude for un as anything,” mused Will.  There was no animosity in the reflection.  His ill-temper had long since vanished, and he considered Clement as he might have considered a young, wayward dog which had erred and brought itself within reach of the lash.

“I was welted in my time hard an’ often, an’ be none the worse,” he continued.

Martin smiled and shook his head.

“Might have served him once; too late now for that remedy, I fear.”

There was a brief pause, then Will changed the conversation abruptly.

“How’s your brother Jan?” he asked.

“He’s furnishing his new house and busy about the formation of a volunteer corps.  I met him not long since in Fingle Gorge.”

“Be you friends now, if I may ax?”

“I tried to be.  We live and learn.  Things happened to me a while ago that taught me what I didn’t know.  I spoke to him and reminded him of the long years in Africa.  Blood’s thicker than water, Blanchard.”

“So ’tis.  What did he make of it?”

“He looked up and hesitated.  Then he shook his head and set his face against me, and said he would not have my friendship as a gift.”

“He’s a gude hater.”

“Time will bring the best of him to the top again some day.  I understand him, I think.  We possess more in common than people suppose.  We feel deeply and haven’t a grain of philosophy between us.”

“Well, I reckon I’ve allus been inclined to deep ways of thought myself; and work up here, wi’ nothing to break your thoughts but the sight of a hawk or the twinkle of a rabbit’s scut, be very ripening to the mind.  If awnly Phoebe was here!  Sometimes I’m in a mood to ramp down-long an’ hale her home, whether or no.  But I sweats the longing out o’ me wi’ work.”

“The day will soon come.  Time drags with me just now, somehow, but it races with you, I’ll warrant.  I must get on with my book, and see Hicks and try and persuade him to help me.”

“’Tis like your big nature to put it that way.  You’rn tu soft-hearted a man to dwell in a house all alone.  Let the dead stones bide, Martin, an’ look round for a wife.  Theer’s more gude advice.  Blamed if I doan’t advise everybody nowadays!  Us must all come to it.  Look round about an’ try to love a woman.  ’T will surprise ‘e an’ spoil sleep if you can bring yourself to it.  But the cuddlin’ of a soft gal doan’t weaken man’s thews and sinews neither.  It hardens ’em, I reckon, an’ puts fight in the most poor-spirited twoad as ever failed in love.  ’Tis a manly thing, an’ ‘boldens the heart like; an’, arter she’s said ‘Yes’ to ’e, you’ll find a wonnerful change come awver life.  ’Tis all her, then.  The most awnself man feels it more or less, an’ gets shook out of his shell.  You’ll knaw some day.  Of course I speaks as wan auld in love an’ married into the bargain.”

“You speak from experience, I know.  And is Phoebe as wise as you, Will?”

“Waitin’ be harder for a wummon.  They’ve less to busy the mind, an’ less mind to busy, for that matter.”

“That’s ungallant.”

“I doan’t knaw.  ‘Tis true, anyway.  I shouldn’t have failed in love wi’ her if she’d been cleverer’n me.”

“Or she with you, perhaps?”

“P’r’aps not.  Anyway as it stands we’m halves of a whole:  made for man and wife.  I reckon I weern’t wan to miss my way in love like some poor fules, as wastes it wheer they might see’t wasn’t wanted if they’d got eyes in their heads.”

“What it is to be so wise!”

Will laughed joyously in his wisdom.

“Very gude of ’e to say that.  ’Tis a happy thing to have sense enough.  Not but we larn an’ larn.”

“So we should.  Well, I must be off now.  I’m safe on the Moor to-day!”

“Ess, by the looks of it.  Theer’ll likely come some mist after noon, but shouldn’t be very thick.”

So they parted, Blanchard having unconsciously sown the seed of an ugly crop that would take long in reaping.  His remarks concerning Clement Hicks were safe enough with Martin, but another had heard them as he worked within earshot of his master.  Bonus, though his judgment was scanty, entertained a profound admiration for Will; and thus it came about, that a few days later, when in Chagford, he called at the “Green Man” and made some grave mischief while he sang his master’s praises.  He extolled the glorious promise of Newtake, and the great improvements already visible thereon; he reflected not a little of Will’s own flamboyant manner to the secret entertainment of those gathered in the bar, and presently he drew down upon himself some censure.

Abraham Chown, the police inspector, first shook his head and prophesied speedy destruction of all these hopes; and then Gaffer Lezzard criticised still more forcibly.

“All this big-mouthed talk’s cracklin’ of thorns under a potsherd,” hesaid.  “You an’ him be just two childern playin’ at shop in the gutter, an’ the gutter’s wheer you’ll find yourselves ’fore you think to.  What do the man knaw? Nothin’.”

“Blanchard’s a far-seein’ chap,” answered Sam Bonus stoutly.  “An’ a gude master; an’ us’ll stick together, fair or foul.”

“You may think it, but wait,” said a small man in the corner.  Charles Coomstock, nephew of the widow of that name already mentioned, was a wheelwright by trade and went lame, owing to an accident with hot iron in youth.

“Ax Clem,” continued Mr. Coomstock.  “For all his cranky ways he knaws Blanchard better’n most of us, an’ I heard un size up the chap t’other day in a word.  He said he hadn’t wit enough to keep his brains sweet.”

“He’m a braave wan to talk,” fired back Bonus.  “Him!  A poor luny as caan’t scrape brass to keep a wife on.  Blanchard, or me either, could crack un in half like a dead stick.”

“Not that that’s anything for or against,” declared Gaffer Lezzard.  “Power of hand’s nought against brain.”

“It gaws a tidy long way ‘pon Dartymoor, however,” declared Bonus.  “An’ Blanchard doan’t set no ‘mazin’ store on Hicks neither, if it comes to words.  I heard un say awnly t’other forenoon that the man was a weak saplin’, allus grumblin’, an’ might be better for a gude hiding.”

Now Charles Coomstock did not love his cousin Clement.  Indeed, none of those who had, or imagined they had, any shadow of right to a place in Mary Coomstock’s will cared much for others similarly situated; but the little wheelwright was by nature a spreader of rumours and reports an intelligencer, malignant from choice.  He treasured this assertion, therefore, together with one or two others.  Sam, now at his third glass, felt his heart warm to Will.  He would have fought with tongue or fist on his behalf, and presently added to the mischief he had already done.

“To shaw ’e, neighbours, just the man he is, I may tell ’e that a larned piece like Martin Grimbal ackshually comed all the way to Newtake not long since to ax advice of un.  An’ ’twas on the identical matter of this same Hicks.  Mr. Grimbal wanted to give un some work to do, ’bout a book or some such item; an’ Will he ups and sez, ‘Doan’t,’ just short an’ straight like that theer.  ‘Doan’t,’ he sez.  ’Let un shaw what’s in un first’; an’ t’other nodded when he said it.”

Having now attested his regard for the master of Newtake, Sam jogged off.  He was pleased with himself, proud of having silenced more than one detractor, and as his little brain turned the matter over, his lips parted in a grin.

Coomstock meanwhile had limped into the cottage where Clement lived with his mother.  He did not garble his news, for it needed no artistic touch; and, with nice sense of his perfect and effective instrument, he realised the weapon was amply sharp enough without whetting, and employed the story as it came into his hand.  But Mr. Coomstock was a little surprised and disappointed at his cousin’s reserve and self-restraint.  He had hoped for a hearty outburst of wrath and the assurance of wide-spreading animosity, yet no such thing happened, and the talebearer presently departed in some surprise.  Mrs. Hicks, indeed, had shrilled forth a torrent of indignation upon the sole subject equal to raising such an emotion in her breast, for Clem was her only son.  The man, however, took it calmly, or appeared to do so; and even when Charles Coomstock was gone he refused to discuss the matter more.

But had his cousin, with Asmodeus-flight, beheld Clement during the subsequent hours which he spent alone, it is possible that the wheelwright had felt amply repaid for his trouble.  Not until dawn stole grey along the village street; not until sparrows in the thatch above him began their salutation to the morning; not until Chagford rookery had sent forth a harmonious multitude to the hills and valleys did Clement’s aching eyes find sleep.  For hours he tossed and turned, now trembling with rage, now prompted by some golden thread in the tangled mazes of his mind to discredit the thing reported.  Blanchard, as it seemed, had come deliberately and maliciously between him and an opportunity to win work.  He burnt to know what he should do; and, like a flame of forked light against the sombre background of his passion, came the thought of another who hated Blanchard too.  Will’s secret glowed and gleamed like the writing on the wall; looking out, Hicks saw it stamped on the dark earth and across the starry night; and he wished to God that the letters might so remain to be read by the world when it wakened.  Finally he slept and dreamed that he had been to the Red House, that he had spoken to John Grimbal, and returned home again with a bag of gold.

When his mother came to call him he was lying half uncovered in a wild confusion of scattered bed-clothes; and his arms and body were jerking as a dog’s that dreams.  She saw a sort of convulsion pinch and pucker his face; then he made some inarticulate sounds as it were a frantic negation; and then the noise of his own cry awakened him.  He looked wildly round and lifted his hands as though he expected to find them full.

“Where is it?  Where is it?  The bag of money?  I won’t I can’t Where is it, I say?”

“I wish I knawed, lovey.  Dream-gawld, I’m afeared.  You’ve bin lying cold, an’ that do allus breed bad thoughts in sleep.  ’Tis late; I done breakfast an hour ago.  An’ Okehampton day, tu.  Coach’ll be along in twenty minutes.”

He sighed and dragged the clothes over himself.

“You’d best go to-day, mother.  The ride will do you good, and I have plenty to fill my time at home.”

Mrs. Hicks brightened perceptibly before this prospect.  She was a little, faded woman, with a brown face and red-rimmed, weak eyes, washed by many years of sorrow to the palest nondescript colour.  She crept through the world with no ambition but to die out of the poorhouse, no prayer but a petition that the parish might not bury her at the end, no joy save in her son.  Life at best was a dreary business for her, and an occasional trip to Okehampton represented about the only brightness that ever crept into it.  Now she bustled off full of excitement to get the honey, and, having put on a withered bonnet and black shawl, presently stood and waited for the omnibus.

Her son dwelt with his thoughts that day, and for him there was no peace or pleasure.  Full twenty times he determined to visit Newtake at once and have it out with Will; but his infirmity of purpose acted like a drag upon this resolution, and his pride also contributed a force against it.  Once he actually started, and climbed up Middledown to reach the Moor beyond; then he changed his mind again as new fires of enmity swept through it.  His wrongs rankled black and bitter; and, faint under them, he presently turned and went home shivering though the day was hot.