Anthony Maybridge arrived at Cross Ways, and amongst the various items of his luggage he was only concerned for his gun-case.  Mrs. Daccombe greeted the youth with old-time courtesy, and her husband soon perceived that the newcomer would be a pupil in little more than name.  Anthony, indeed, made an energetic start, and for the space of a full week resolutely dogged the farmer’s footsteps; but his enterprise sprang from a whim rather than a fixed enthusiasm.  On the spur of the moment, before various alternatives, he had decided upon farming; but the impulse toward that life waned, and in a month the lad found Richard Daccombe’s society much more congenial than that of his taciturn parent.  Good store of snipe and plover were now upon the Moor, and they drew young Maybridge more surely than the business of manuring hay lands or getting in the mangel-wurzel crop.  With Dick, indeed, he struck into close fellowship, founded on the basis of the gun; and with Jane Stanberry he also became more friendly than anybody but herself was aware.  Socially, Maybridge stood separated from his host by the accident of success alone.  p. 223Daccombe and Anthony’s father were old acquaintances, and the latter, a prosperous nurseryman at Tavistock, sometimes fell in with his friend when the hounds met at the powder-mills.

The boy found Jane sympathetic, and being possessed of a warm heart but little sense, he soon revealed to her the true cause of his present life and temporary banishment from home.

“If you can believe it,” he said, when she met him returning from a day with the snipe in the bogs,—“if you can believe it, I shall be surprised.  I always thought a man ought to look up to women as the soul of truth and all that.  I was engaged—secretly; and there was another chap I hardly knew by sight even; and that girl was playing with me—like you play with a hooked fish; the only difference being she didn’t want to land me.  In fact, I was the bait, if you understand such a blackguard thing, and she fished with me and caught the other chap.  I could mention names, but what’s the use?”

“How horrid!” said Jane.  “I’m sure I’d very much rather not know who ’twas.”

“Well, anyway, the other chap took the bait.  And the moment she got him she threw me over.  After we were engaged, mind you!  And the rum thing is, looking at it from a mere worldly point of view, that I shall be worth tons more money than that chap ever will be.”

p. 224“She didn’t really care about you, then?”

“I suppose not, though I would have taken my dying oath she did.  And after the frightful blow of being chucked, I tried to hide the effect, but couldn’t, owing to going right off my feed—especially breakfasts.  My mother spotted that, and taxed me with being ill—a thing I never have been in my life.  So I had to confess to her what a frightful trial I’d been through, and she told the governor.”

“I’m sure they must have been very sad about it, for your sake.”

“Not half as much as you would have thought; though many chaps have been utterly smashed up body and soul and gone into a consumption of the lungs for less.  But it came as a bit of a shock to my people, because, you see, I’d never mentioned it, and—well, the girl was in a tobacconist’s shop, and my governor hates tobacco; which made it worse, though very unfair it should.  Anyway, it shows what girls are.”

“And shows what fathers are, seemingly.”

“Yes; though how my governor, whose grandfather himself went out working in other people’s gardens, could object to a girl who had pluck enough to earn her own living, I don’t know.  I had a furious row about it, until he pointed out that, as she had chucked me, it was not much good quarrelling with him about her.  Which was true.  Nobody p. 225but you has really understood what a knock-down thing it was.  I’m an atheist now—simply owing to that woman; I don’t believe in a single thing.  I said all girls were the same till I met you.  Still, I feel as bitter as a lemon when I think much about it.  But you’re different, I can see that.”

“You’ll feel happier come presently.”

“I am happier already—in a way, because I find all women are not like that.  You and Mrs. Daccombe have done me a lot of good, especially you.”

“Sure I be gay and proud to think so,” said Jane.

“To promise and then change!  Why, it’s contrary to human nature, I should think,” declared the ingenuous Anthony.  But Jane Stanberry did not reply; she had reached a point in her own experience of life that indicated the possibility of such a circumstance.

Young Maybridge was pleasant to see, and, as cynical chance would have it, his gifts, both physical and mental, were of a sort to shine conspicuous from the only contrast at hand.  Dick Daccombe had a face of true Celtic cast, that might have been handsome, but was spoiled by an expression generally surly and always mean.  His character became more distrustful and aggressive as he grew older, and the suspicious nature of him looked specially ill before Anthony’s frankness and simplicity.  The latter was fair, with open, Saxon type of p. 226countenance.  His good temper overcame all Richard’s jealousy from the first, but the keeper envied Anthony’s extra inch and a half of height and greater weight of shoulder, though he himself was the closer knit of the two.

For a period of weeks all went well between the young men, and their increasing intimacy argued ill for Anthony’s progress toward practical knowledge in agriculture.  This Jonathan Daccombe understood, but held it no concern of his.  It happened that the farmer came home one day just in time to see his son and his pupil departing from Cross Ways together.  An expression of contempt touched with slight amusement lighted his grey face, and he turned to Jane Stanberry, who stood at the door.

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