Mr. Norcot found the life at Fox Tor Farm so much to his taste that he prolonged his visit, and sent the young man, Thomas Putt, with a message to his sister Gertrude at Chagford for more clothes. He felt secretly hopeful that each day was strengthening his position, and, indeed, by riding to the War Prison and seeing the Commandant on behalf of Cecil Stark, he won some thanks and a definite expression of gratitude from Grace Malherb.
"They have released him out of the cachot," said Peter. "Once more he labours at the place of worship, \'pride in his port, defiance in his eye.\'"
Together the man and maid continued their excursions upon Dartmoor, and Grace enjoyed both to hear and to tell stories and legends of the ancient desert. Its romance found an echo in her youthful spirit and awoke new intellectual interests in her life. She soon learned the story of each lonely circle, uplifted monolith, and empty barrow from the age of stone; of every ruined cot or cross erected in times medi?val. Among these last, perhaps the most famous upon the Moor lay now within Malherb\'s own borders.
"Childe\'s Tomb" had met Grace\'s eyes when first she opened them upon a Dartmoor dawn. By a rivulet at the edge of Fox Tor Mire it stood, and she had gleaned its story and mourned the fate of the ancient hunter who fell there in winter tempest. Mr. Norcot, too, was familiar with the narrative, and since early boyhood he had gloated over its horrid details. Now he pretended but a misty recollection of the tale, so that he might listen to Grace.
The thing was in their eyes at the time, for they started on horseback and rode past it. Beside the cross, Harvey Woodman, his son, Richard Beer, Thomas Putt, and another labourer were collected at a task. They worked upon each side of the little river that ran beside "Childe\'s Tomb," and levelled the banks to make a ford at a shallow point of the water. Here they talked together when aching backs required rest; and it happened that their master and his guest were the theme of the moment.
"I\'ll hold for Mister Peter," declared Putt. "He gived me a week\'s wages for going to Chaggyford; an\' he told me just so friendly as you might, when he seed me bringing in trout, that a grasshopper was a killing bait at this time of year. Of course I know as much about grasshoppers as any man living; yet \'twas a very great condescension in him."
Uncle Smallridge made reply. He was now past work, but had walked from his distant cottage for the pleasure of a little conversation with familiars.
"\'Tis the human nature in \'un that counts," he said. "You\'ll find as a general thing the best men ban\'t the easiest to get on with."
"Malherb\'s chock full o\' human nature," declared Mr. Woodman.
"So full that he bursts wi\' it—like a falling thunderbolt, till a man almost calls on the hills to cover him," admitted Putt.
"That\'s because you catched it for idleness," answered Woodman. "Mr. Narcot be like a machine oiled up to the last cog an\' going so smooth an\' suent that a child may turn the handle; an\' maister\'s like a drashel[*] in clumsy hands—you don\'t know where \'twill fall next. But give me our man with all his faults an\' fire."
[*] Drashel: A flail.
"I\'m afraid he\'ll try you sorely yet," foretold Smallridge, and little guessed how near the ordeal had come.
"I\'ll cleave to him so long as it holds with honesty," said Beer. "What mazes me is this: Mr. Peter never does nothing out of the common, nor never lapses from the level way of man with man, nor says a hard word to a fly; an\' yet I doan\'t neighbour with him; an\' t\'other, despite his rages and crooked words and terrible rash goings on—as will damn your eyes for a look—why, I\'d hold out for him against an army."
"\'Tis his weakness draws you to him," said Uncle Smallridge. "I know. Us all likes to catch our betters tripping. It levels up the steep gulf that\'s fixed between master an\' man, an\' makes us more content with ourselves. You know how extra good t\'other children get when one be extra naughty. This here Norcot is above us in his estate, an\' that we can forgive, for us can\'t help it; but we\'m never too comfortable or kindly towards them as be much above us in vartues."
"For my part, it don\'t seem natural," said Harvey Woodman. "I don\'t believe in these great flights of goodness in man or woman. Here and there a parson will stand out like a beacon on a hill, for \'tis his trade; but not them as lives to make money like Peter Norcot. When what shows in a man be so shining, I always ax myself about what don\'t show."
"\'Tis your jealous spirit," said Putt.
"All the same, I don\'t care for a man as hides behind hisself like that wool-stapler do. The Devil\'s got his corner in him, same as he have in every mother\'s son of us."
"He may have cast him out, however," ventured Putt.
"Cast him out at five-an\'-thirty years of age—an\' him a bachelor! No fey."
"Well, he ban\'t bound to belittle hisself before the likes of us," said Putt.
"Here he be, anyway," added Beer, for Grace and Peter now approached.
She was finishing the tragic history of Childe as she rode beside him.
"And so the monks of Tavistock found the poor frozen gentleman where this cross now stands, and they took him away that he might be buried in their town, for under his last will and testament those who buried him were to possess all his estates. Others sought then to gain the body; but the good monks were too clever for them, and inherited the lands of Plymstock."
"Ah! \'they must rise betime, or rather not go to bed at all, that will overreach monks in matters of profit,\' as Fuller observes."
"The people hereabout call it \'Childe\'s Tomb,\' yet it can only be a cenotaph, if the story is true."
"The whole thing is a legend, be sure. We shall never know the real use of this cross," answered Peter.
"But might easily find a new one," said Mr. Kekewich, who walked beside Grace on his way to the workers. "Them stepstones be just the very thing we\'re wanting to bridge the river here."
"Oh, Kek! how can you?" cried Grace.
"Pull down a cross? Tut, tut, iconoclast!" exclaimed Mr. Norcot.
"You may use wicked words, but stone be stone," answered the head man of Fox Tor Farm sulkily; "an\' what was one way of marking a grave in the old time may very well stand for a bridge to-day. Look at they fools! What do they think they be doing?"
Woodman heard the question.
"We\'m making a ford, and you\'m the fool, not us," he replied stoutly.
"What did the master say? Tell me that," asked Kekewich.
"He said \'a bridge,\' for I heard him," declared Norcot.
"Ess, he did, an\' when he sez \'bridge\' he don\'t mean \'ford\'; an\' when he sez \'steer\' he don\'t mean \'heifer,\' do he? A bridge has got to be builded. So the sooner you fetch gunpowder an\' go \'pon the Moor to blast out a good slab of stone as\'ll go across here without a pier, the better."
"He don\'t always say what he mean, all the same," retorted Putt, who was in a fighting mood. "Yesterday he told me I was a pink-eyed rabbit, good for nought, an\' this marning he called it back, an\' said he was sorry he\'d spoke it. That shows."
"That shows he can change his own mind; it don\'t show the likes of you can change it for him. Here he comes, anyway, an\' what I say, I say: that thicky cross-steps would make a very tidy bridge, an\' save a week\'s work."
"You\'d touch that cross!" gasped Smallridge. "You—a foreigner from Exeter!"
"Us have a right to it."
"No man have a right to a stone once \'tis fashioned into a cross; an\' if you was a Christian \'stead of a crook-backed heathen, you\'d know it an\' if a finger be laid against it, I\'d not give a straw for the future of any man amongst us," cried Uncle Smallridge, rising to his feet in great agitation.
"Fright childer with your twaddle, not a growed-up soul," answered Kekewich. "But no call to shake your jaw an\' bristle up your old mane like that. My word ban\'t law. Here the master cometh, an\' you\'m like to hear more than will be stomachable when he sees what you\'ve been doing."
"The fault was mine, and I\'ll take the blame," answered Richard Beer. "You men bide quiet an\' let his anger fall upon me."
Grace and Norcot, not desiring to see the labourers\' discomfiture, rode away, and a moment later Maurice Malherb arrived upon the scene. His strong face, scarred with passion uncontrolled, grew dark again now, and the kindly look vanished from his eyes as the customary storm-cloud of black eyebrow settled upon them.
"What are you doing? What means this digging?" he asked.
"\'Tis me as done it, your honour," answered Beer. "I thought as a ford——"
"A ford! What business have you to dare to think? I said a bridge."
"The stone——"
"Look round you, you lazy rascal! Stone—stone—curse the stone! Scratch the ground anywhere, and it grins at you with its granite teeth! Let that............