The destruction of Childe\'s Tomb awoke no protest upon the county-side, for antiquaries had not yet turned their attention to the interesting and obscure relics of former ages scattered over Dartmoor. A few intelligent men mourned that another medi?val landmark had been sacrificed to the advance of civilisation; then the matter was forgotten, save at Fox Tor Farm, where great unrest still reigned among the workers.
The women exhibited chief concern; but while Annabel and Grace Malherb showed sentimental regret and the master laughed at them for their folly, Dinah Beer and Mary Woodman took a far more serious view of the incident, and reduced their husbands to the extremity of uneasiness. They foretold disaster upon all concerned; Mr. Kekewich they specially tormented, and declared that, as arch instigator of the outrage, upon him the first grief must fall. He cared nothing; but Richard, Harvey, and others went in growing fear. They longed for weeks and months to pass that they might be removed by time from the hour of their evil deed; then, as each uneventful day dwindled and each night passed by, they drew a little nearer toward peace of mind. After a month had passed they plucked up spirit and faced the unseen with steadier gaze.
"Another week gone an\' nothing said," whispered Putt one morning to Harvey Woodman, where they worked at wall-building. He glanced sideways up to heaven as he spoke with a gesture of suspicion.
"No—the world goes on very easy. What did Peter Norcot give \'e for taking the pack-horse with his leather boxes back to Chaggyford?"
"There again—good luck surely. A crown I got by it; an\' I ate my meat with Mason\'s mother an\' sister who live there. Mason be Mr. Norcot\'s man, and his sister is called Tryphena. An\' I be going over again, for she said, when I axed her, that pinky rims to the eyes didn\'t stand against a chap in her judgment. She thought \'twas a beauty, if anything. Her be a few year older\'n me; but that often works very well, an\' keeps down the family."
"You\'d best to be careful, all the same," said Woodman. "The woman as you meets half-way, often makes you go t\'other half afore you think you\'ve started."
"I won\'t hear no word against that female from you or any man," declared Thomas Putt, growing very red.
"From me you certainly won\'t, seeing as I never heard tell of her afore this minute," replied Woodman calmly. "Only, as a married man, I say go slow. When a girl tells you such eyes as yourn be beautiful, she\'s getting to that state of mind when they put a home of their own afore truth and common sense an\' everything."
Putt was about to answer rather warmly when Richard Beer appeared. His beard blew about him; his eyes were sunk into his head, and dull care stared from them.
"It\'s come!" he said. "I\'ve held my peace these twenty-four hours; an\' longer I will not. The ill luck have set in! There\'s no more doubt about it."
"Have it hit you?" asked Putt, his anger vanishing; "because if so, us ban\'t safe neither."
"Not directly. It strikes the farm. There\'s scores o\' dozens o\' moles in the meadow; and the rats have come to the pig-styes in an army."
"They be natural things," declared Putt. "You might expect \'em. Where there\'s pigs there\'s rats."
"Yes, but not like a plague. They\'ve come up in a night, same as them frogs in Egypt."
"You\'m down-daunted about nought," answered Woodman. "Read what some of they Bible heroes had to suffer. There\'s nought like dipping into the prophet Job when you\'m out of heart with your luck. \'Twill make you very contented. My gran\'faither always read Job slap through after he\'d had a row wi\' the Duchy."
"As for me, I shall bide wi\' the man so long as he can pay wages," said Putt.
They passed to their work; and elsewhere Maurice Malherb, not ignorant of the verminous inroad upon fields and styes, was debating whether he should sink his pride and summon Leaman Cloberry. But while time passed by and he hesitated, there came a post and tidings so momentous that the rats and moles were forgotten.
Now, indeed, did trouble like an armed man break in on Fox Tor Farm; the light of the Malherbs vanished, and their hope set in lasting sorrow. Noel Malherb, serving under Sir Rowland Hill, with the right of Lord Wellington\'s army in the Peninsula, had fallen before Vittoria.
Annabel and her daughter took this grief into secrecy, and were hidden from the world through many weeks; Malherb fought it down, and concealed his emotion from all eyes. He laughed not less seldom, he fell into anger more often than of yore.
"Pharaoh cracked his heart when his first was took," said Woodman to Kekewich; "but this man——"
"His heart\'s hid in his breast, not open to your eye," answered the other. "His heart be cracked all right, though he don\'t come to us an\' say so. But I know—by the voice of \'un, an\' the long, lonely rides he takes all about nothing, an\' his look when he stares at his darter—a miser\'s eyes—same as that old mully-grub Lovey Lee when she claws a bit of money."
"\'Childe\'s Tomb\' have done its work—Uncle Smallridge didn\'t lie."
"Seeing as this poor young gentleman was shot down and dust in his grave weeks an\' weeks afore we touched the cussed cross—for I heard master say so—you\'ll allow you\'re talking foolishness."
"The Lord can work backwards so easy as he can work forwards. Miss Grace will be the next, you mark me."
"Norcot\'ll have her come presently," said Kekewich. "She\'ve got to wipe her mother\'s tears for the present. This here cruel come-along-of-it have cut ten years off the life of Missis."
The ancient spoke truth, for Annabel Malherb\'s sufferings under her great trial proved terrible. They were more objective than her husband\'s. The family and the race were nothing to her; she only knew that a French bullet had taken the life of her firstborn, and she would never look into his brown eyes again or put her cheek against his. Even her boy\'s beloved dust was buried within the hecatombs of Spain, and her tears would never fall upon his grave. But Malherb, beside this present misfortune of his son\'s sacrifice for the country, had a deeper and more lasting pang of ambition blighted and hope for ever dead. He had toiled in vain; he had lifted this stout dwelling as a heritage for none. Presently his daughter would wed with Norcot, and no young eyes of his own race would see the larches and Scotch firs of his planting grow into trees; no heir would note the ebony and golden lichens write dignity and age upon his roof of slate, nor see the mosses mellow his granite walls. Aliens must follow and the name of Malherb would vanish, like the fragrant memory of last year\'s fern.
Then, within six weeks of the ill tidings, a great conceit suddenly flashed upon Malherb; and as the Witch of Endor called forth that awful shade of Samuel to her own admiration, so did this man raise the unexpected spirit of a thought. Suddenly, amidst the mean and familiar imaginings of life, uprising like a giant from among the dwarfish throng of practical and common notions, there stalked tremendous an Idea; and he stood astonished before it, appraised its magnitude and welcomed it for an inspiration from the Gods.
This fancy came to Malherb as he pursued the prosaic business of casting figures; and he threw down his pen, picked up his hat, and hastened into the little walled garden of the farm to find his wife. He longed to tell of this message that seemed to point to peace; but his impatience was not set at rest for the space of hours. Mrs. Malherb had ridden out on a pillion behind Mr. Beer, and Dinah could say nothing of their destination.
Irritated at the accident, Maurice himself strode on to the Moor, and proceeded towards Fox Tor, that he might note his wife returning and reach her as quickly as possible.
His way took him past a favourite haunt of his daughter\'s, and when he reached the broken stonework of the tor, Malherb surprised Grace in serious conversation with a young man.
The girl had gone out alone to pass her summer hours with mournful thoughts. The horizon of her life was clouded now, and already sorrow in the present and cares for the future robbed her young days of their former contentment. Her heart was warm—a delicious empty chamber that awaiteth one as yet unknown. Beyond the dark grief of her brother\'s death, another now lurked, and Time, that should have dawdled with her in these rosy hours of youth, while yet her heart had never throbbed to one loved name, raced fast and pitiless as the east wind. Down his closing avenues, outlined immediately ahead, stood one at the horizon of her life, appeared a man as the goal and crown of her maiden race. There beamed the neat, trim, and amiable apparition of Mr. Peter Norcot. It was no precocity that forced poor Grace into thinking so much of love, while yet she knew it not; but in her esteem, love and marriage embraced the same idea, and now she marvelled mutely to find not love, but a very a............