On a day when the storm had sunk to a grim memory, when cold winds blustered and more snow fell through the dark and sunless weeks before spring-time, did Harvey Woodman and Richard Beer hold converse with ancient Kekewich. For once the pessimist had those of the household with him; but no sooner were the labouring men reduced to a condition of absolute hopelessness before the picture he painted, when Kekewich changed sides, according to his wont, took up his master\'s part and foretold fair things out of contradiction.

"Ban\'t our business," declared Woodman, "an\' yet even a common man have eyes; an\' touching the potatoes, a fool could see he\'s wrong."

"Actually feeding the stock on \'em, an\' grumbling when my wife goes to fill a sack for the house!" said Beer. "Ban\'t good husbandry or good sense to feed beastes on such human food. Lord knows they potatoes cost enough to fetch up out o\' the airth. \'Twould be better far to face the trouble an\' buy fodder in a big spirit."

"No method to him, if a man may say so without disrespect," answered Woodman. "Of course you wants to look forward more \'pon Dartymoor."

"He fights the Moor same as he fights life," explained Kekewich. "The masterfulness of un be so tremendous that us might almost look to see Nature go down afore him."

"Nature don\'t go down; \'tis us that do," replied Beer; "an\' if the storm haven\'t taught him that, nothing won\'t. \'Tis no sense your telling that sort o\' rummage, Kek, an\' very well you know it."

"Not but the gentleman have his black moments," continued Woodman. "I\'ve seed him pass by me many a time wi\' a cloud on\'s face, an\' a puzzled look in his eyes, as if he was trying to read in a book an\' couldn\'t catch the meaning. Essterday he stood in the opeway an\' stared out afore him so grim as a ghost, as if he might have been waiting a message from the sky."

"He\'ll get a message as he won\'t like the taste of afore long," foretold Beer.

"He don\'t go about the right way to larn, I\'m sure—to say it without offence," added Woodman.

"He won\'t larn nought from you dumpheads, that\'s sartain," said Kekewich. "But he\'m far off a fool, an\' his heart\'s got eyes if his head haven\'t. When all\'s said, \'tis for his lady an\' his darter he thinks an\' plans. He lies waking o\' nights for the honour an\' glory of the family. Things will fall out right yet, an us shall live to see it."

"\'Tis very well, though you\'m the first to holler \'ruin\' yourself most days," retorted Beer, rather indignant that Kekewich should thus take up a position so unusual. "Us all knows the man do mean well as an angel, yet it looks a very unhandsome thing to thrust his maiden into matrimony with a chap she hates like sin."

"So it do," assented Woodman. "You\'m right, Richard. He\'ll take his stand behind his darter\'s welfare an\' put a husband she hates upon her. Wise it may be; Christian it ban\'t. But everything\'s cut and dried now, and Mordecai Cockey, the journeyman tailor, be coming in six weeks to make the clothes, so my wife tells me."

"The maiden\'s Malherb, faither or no faither," said Beer, "and Dinah, as understands such affairs, have marked by many a foretoken that she won\'t wed out of her heart—not for fifty faithers."

"Matters be coming to a climax then," declared Harvey Woodman solemnly. "My wife dreamed o\' blood t\'other night; an\' for my part I\'ve seen Childe\'s tomb in my dreams, wi\' Childe hisself rising up like a ragged foreign bear. I do hate for things to come in a heap this way. Ban\'t natural we should be called upon to suffer more ills than one to a time. There\'s the whole Book of Lamentations bearing down on Fox Tor Farm in my opinion, an\' I\'d so soon be away as not."

"He\'ve got money, however," argued Beer. "Money will stem a good few mortal ills, let them as haven\'t got none say what they please."

"As to that, my Mary heard him tell Missis something about a canal somewheres that\'s gone scat; an\' the lady turned white as curds an\' went in her chamber for to get over it unseen," answered Woodman. "If you ax me, I reckon he\'m driven for money. When I spoke to un of half a dozen more drashels,[*] as wouldn\'t have cost half-a-crown, he got so touchy as proud-flesh, an\' told me to run out of his sight, an\' said us was a lot o\' lazy good-for-nothing hirelings as never thought of his pocket. Of course he was round next day as usual with a cheerful word an\' the money; but I tented un to the quick when I axed for it first."


[*] Drashels: Flails.


"An\' that\'s why Miss Grace have got to marry Mr. Norcot, no doubt," declared Beer. "\'Tis so much for her father\'s good as her own belike."

He nodded to where Grace rode past the barn. She was clad in a snug, short habit of purple Totnes serge; and upon her hands were a pair of gloves made from the skin of a wild cat that had been captured after prodigious exertions by Thomas Putt. Behind Grace rode John Lee, and their enterprise was secret, for it had to do with the young man\'s recent great discovery. Now Grace, despite the languor of these days and the anti-climax that followed upon Cecil Stark\'s departure, found herself awake and much alive. Darkness shadowed her life and her home. She knew that trouble slept with her parents and haunted her father in all his goings; she suffered for them; yet she believed that no such sorrow as her own private sorrow had ever crushed into a human life before; that no such tragic experience as this mistake of emotion for passion, had until now tortured an unhappy young heart. Yet to fight upon her father\'s side seemed good. She desired dangers and difficulties to lift her from her personal tribulations. She herself had planned the present expedition, and Lee was in some concern, for though undertaken by daylight, it lacked not danger. John had at last discovered Lovey\'s hiding-place, and now he was taking his mistress to see it.

"Your star-bright eyes will find this wondrous treasure if \'tis there," he said. "For myself I could light on nothing but money-bags. They had gold in \'em and were ranged on stone ledges as high as I could reach. For the rest, there was a pitcher under trickling water that runs in a corner of the place; a basin, with mouldy bread and cheese in it; and a great stone upon which stood half a dozen rush-lights. And as I first climbed down, \'twas like the story of Arabia that you told me, for the walls of the hole all shone as though they were plastered with pure gold. A light in darkness they made. \'Tis a shining moss that glitters there on the damp rocks. I\'m right glad to have found the place; an\' yet my mind misgives me that more evil than good will come out of it."

"The only evil that can come out is Lovey Lee. If she caught us!"

"No—that won\'t happen. She\'s safe for to-day. You\'ll laugh, but you know there\'s force in the old charms for all your laughing. They work, though wiseacres may know better."

"John, John!"

"A maiden nail has power, I tell you, despite all scoffing."

"A maiden nail! And what is that?"

"A nail fresh made from bar iron—one that has never touched ground. Drive such in the threshold of a witch\'s door and for a day and night she cannot hurt a fly."

"Really, John Lee, I could blush for you—here at the beginning of the nineteenth century, in these dazzling days of enlightenment!"

"I got \'em from Noah Newcombe, hot off his anvil," said John, "and I\'ve driven them home into the dern of grandmother\'s door. Believe it or not, I very well know she\'s harmless to all mankind this day."

"I wish I had such faith in men as you have in nails, John," said the girl thoughtfully. Then silence fell between them, and Grace reflected upon her sweetheart\'s credulity. She had never realised the extent of it until recent events and the intercourse with the American prisoner. Peter Norcot\'s manifold ingenuities and petty cleverness of quips and cranks had but served to make John Lee\'s simplicity shine bright by contrast; but the light that Stark cast over thought was a white light, and smote pitiless upon both the others.

"You have faith in one man sure?" said John presently. He had thought of her words long before replying to them.

"In two—in two," she answered hastily; but more she would not say.

"\'Tis old Kekewich and me," he mused aloud. "A very strange thing, my lady dear, that two such men should get to be trusted by your sweet spirit, afore all the rest of the world."

But she could not let him remain in ignorance.

"I meant Mr. Stark, not Kek," she answered.

He nodded and looked away.

"I know you meant him. \'Twas only to see if you\'d tell me, that I pretended you meant Kek. A sly thing to do, but somehow I was tempted."

She did not answer, nor did he speak again until they reached the ruin in Hangman\'s Hollow.

"Here we are at last—a queer sort of place. \'Twould call for little fancy to see my grandmother meeting the Devil himself here after dark. \'Pon that rowan above the gravel-pit a man hanged himself a little while back, \'cause he found he\'d been cheated over a horse. Here, under our feet, is granny\'s den. We\'ll dismount, tether up; an\' then you follow me down this blind alley-way to the top of the mound. By the wall-side at the end, is a stone that will turn when we set foot upon it, and open a hole down the blowing-house chimney into a great chamber underground."

Grace dismounted; John fastened up their horses and soon led the way whither Lovey Lee had vanished.

"But \'twas no miracle after all, you see. There—the stone twists on a regular pivot. \'Tis balanced beneath like a logan."

He showed where a large piece of granite slowly yielded under his weight. Then he retained it in position with a stick and made it firm. A black, perpendicular pit appeared, and upon the side of it rough stones protruded irregularly and fo............