Events by no means conspired to shake the keeper’s evil determination.  Lulled to fancied security and a belief that his indifference indicated a change of mind toward her, Jane continued her attention to Dick; and he abstained from upbraiding her, for he took this display to be love, and felt more than ever assured that, Maybridge once out of the way, the girl would waken as from a dream to the reality of his regard and worship.  Her conduct, indeed, obscured his own affection, but he came of a class that takes life and its tender relations callously.  The only ardent and worthy emotion that had ever made his heart throb quicker was this girl.  His love was still alive, nor could anger kill it while he continued blind to the truth that she no longer cared for him.

A fortnight after his visit to the Case House, Dick descended by night from his den upon the high moor, and the dim flicker of a flame he had long desired to see strung his nerves to steel.  For fulfilment of his plan it was necessary that he should come pat on the interval between the arrival of Anthony Maybridge at this tryst and Jane’s p. 248subsequent approach.  Twice he had been too late; to-night he arrived in time, and his opportunity waited for him.  Maybridge was alone.  The light burnt in silence.  Then came a solitary footfall on the hollow floor above the gunpowder.

Daccombe had calculated every action that would combine to complete and perfect the deed now before him.  Nor had he disdained to consider the result.  No witness could rise up against him; his enemy would be blown out of physical existence, and his own subsequent declaration that some tons of blasting powder remained forgotten in the old magazine must serve to explain the rest.  A spark from Anthony’s pipe would be a satisfactory solution.

The man set about his murder swiftly and stealthily.  He had already driven a heavy staple into the door of the Case House, and now, without a sound, he fastened his victim firmly in, using some lengths of brass rabbit wire for the purpose.  Then he crept down below the level of the building, scratched away the turf and fern and moved the loosened bricks.  He felt the powder dry under his hand, brought a large lump of rotten wood from his breast pocket, where he had long carried it, and struck a match.  Soon the touchwood glowed, and he set it down, leapt from his work and hastened away along the path by which Jane must presently p. 249approach.  Thus he designed to intercept her progress, and, upon some pretence or excuse, draw her from the zone of danger.  As to that last point, however, he was doubtful.  The amount of the powder he could not accurately tell, and the extent of the explosion remained to be seen.  Richard calculated that three minutes, if not a longer period, must elapse before fire would gnaw up the dead wood and reach the powder; and now, as he moved hastily away, the seconds lengthened into minutes, and the minutes most horribly dragged.  An infinite abyss of time widened out between the deed and its effect.  He lived his life again; and still he peered through the darkness with his eyes, and strained upon the silence with his ears, that he might not let Jane Stanberry pass him and go ignorantly to destruction.

He was a quarter of a mile from the Case House, when it seemed as though the heavens were opened and Doomsday suddenly loosed upon the world.  An awful and withering explosion swept the glen like a storm.  First there leapt aloft a pillar of pale fire, that rose and spread as the eruption of a volcano spreads.  The terrific glare painted long miles of the Moor, and like the hand of lightning, revealed the shaggy crowns of the tors on many a distant hill; while, long before its livid sheaf of flame had sunk, came such a crash and bellow of p. 250sound as might burst from the upheaval of a world in earthquake.  Upon this appalling detonation a wave of air swept in sudden tempest.  Richard was blown off his feet and dashed to the ground; and as he fell, the hills echoed back the explosion in crashing reverberations that rolled out of the darkness, rose and fell, and rose again, until, after a hundred repetitions flung hither and thither over the peaks of the land, they sank through a growling diminuendo into silence.  And the silence was terrific by contrast with the awful clamour it succeeded, even as the darkness was intense that followed upon such an unwonted and far-flung glare of light.

Richard Daccombe got upon his feet, and the tinkle of broken glass was in his ears, with the murmur of affrighted voices; for the concussion had shattered nearly every pane at Cross Ways, and mightily alarmed the dwellers there.

When he reached home the young keeper found his parents already out-of-doors, with the whole household assembled about them.

Mary Daccombe praised God at sight of her son uninjured.

“’Tis the end of the world, by the sound of it,” she said.  “Where be Davey to?”

His father questioned Richard, and the man declared his ignorance of all particulars.

p. 251“An explosion at the old powder-mills, or else a bolt from heaven,” he answered.  “I must have passed by the very place, I reckon, not five minutes before the upstore.”

“A thunder-planet, for sartain,” declared an ancient soul, whose few teeth chattered between his words.  “I can call home when a com-com-comet was reigning fifty years an’ more agone, an’ ’twas just such open weather as us have had o’ late.”

Mr. Daccombe felt anxious for his stock in certain byres and cow-houses that lay to the west of the powder-mills.  But first he held up a lantern and counted the company.

“Be us all here?” he asked.

“Davey’s out somewheers,” answered his wife; “ess, an’ Jane Stanberry be—”  She broke off, and looked at the farmer.

“Down-long, I s’pose,” he said carelessly; then he turned to Richard.  “Us can’t blink these meetings between ’em, Dick.  Best man wins where a maid’s the prize; or which she thinks be the best.  Awnly God send her ban’t in the powder-mills to-night.”

“’Tis most certain she be,” answered Mary Daccombe.  “Her didn’t know as the young man—Mr. Maybridge—was called off sudden to Moreton to serve ’pon a committee for the Hunt Dinner next month.  A chap rode out, and he saddled his p. 252mare hisself and galloped off we him directly after he’d ate his meat.”

“Jane didn’t know?” asked Richard.

“No, she went out counting to find him, I’m afraid.”

“An’ he’m at Moreton?”

The man asked in a voice so strange that none failed to note it, even in this dark moment of fear and turmoil.

“Her went to wait for him usual place, no doubt,” said Jonathan Daccombe.  “Us had better come an’ look around for her, an’ Davey too—not to name the things in the long byre by the wood.”

A hideous cry suddenly cut Jonathan short, for a storm had swept the sinner’s brain upon these words.  He saw what he had done, and the shock overset the balance of his mind.

“Come!” he cried; “I’ve killed her, I’ve ended her days in a scatter of blood and flesh!  Nought to show for the butivul round body of her now.  But her shall have Christian burial, if ’tis awnly a hair of her head left to put in the churchyard; an’ I’ll mourn for her on my knees, afore they string me up!”

“God’s goodness! what gabble be this?” asked his father.

“And Maybridge still alive, wi’ no smell of fire about him.  I’ll—I’ll—”

p. 253He broke off and gazed round him wildly.

“Upon the Moreton road as he comes home-along!” he said.  Then the wretch turned to hurry away.  At the first step, however, he stopped and stood as still as a statue, for he had heard what was hidden from the ears of the rest.  Then they too caught the sound of footsteps and a murmuring in the night.  Richard remained without moving, and his eyes glared into the dark, and his jaw had fallen.  Then, taking shape and coming slowly into the radius of lantern light, there moved a woman and a boy.

Jane Stanberry approached, holding Davey by the hand; and at sight of her Richard Daccombe screamed out his shattered senses, and fled as one possessed of an evil spirit.  In vain they made search for him by night and day, and it was not until more than eight-and-forty hours had passed that they found him wandering in the great central loneliness insane.  There they ministered to him, and brought him home; and time so dealt with him that he sank into a harmless and haunted idiocy—a horror for his father, a knife in his mother’s heart.

Now it happened that Richard’s brother, upon the keeper’s departure from the Case House on a day already noted, had descended from his pine tree, made close investigation of the elder’s deed, and guessed that such preparations were directed p. 254against one man.  From that day until the time of the catastrophe, David kept silent watch upon all occasions when Jane and Anthony Maybridge met there.  Hidden within a dry drain some ten yards distant, he had played sentinel until the night of Richard’s revenge.  Then he had crept from his cover the moment the other’s back was turned, reached the smouldering touchwood, and with amazing courage extinguished it.  Afterward, releasing the girl as quickly as possible, and bidding her run for her life to the shelter of a grinding mill two hundred yards distant, he had once more set the rotten wood on fire and hastened after Jane.

She, mystified and indignant, was also conscious that the boy must be obeyed, and so fled as he ordered her.  Yet both would have perished but for their protection behind the stout ruin of the grinding mill.  And now, the fear of death upon their faces, they hurried trembling home, and Nemesis came with them.

*     *     *

To-day a black-bearded man, with brown eyes and a mouth always open, shambles about the blasted heart of the old powder-mill.  He babbles to himself with many a frown and pregnant nod and look askance; sometimes he watches the trout in the river; sometimes he plucks feverishly at the blossoms of the broom and spearwort and other p. 255yellow flowers.  These he stamps underfoot as one stamps fire.  Davey is his brother’s keeper, and shall be seen always at hand.  At his word Richard Daccombe obeys like a dog—shrinks with fear if the boy is angry, fawns and laughs when the boy is kind.
p. 257JOSEPH

p. 259“I do love they stuckit plants,” said Mr. Joseph Hannaford.

He waved his hands toward some lettuces of a fat figure and plump proportions.

“Doan’t want no work—that’s why,” answered Matthew Smallridge.  “The straggly sort be better, but they axes for tying up an’ trouble.”

“Ezacally so.  An’ a man as goes out of his way to sow trouble be a fule, Matthew,” retorted Joseph, triumphantly.

The gardeners met every day, and every day differed on affairs of horticulture and life.  Joseph was stout, with a red face set in a white frill of whisker.  He had a rabbit mouth, a bald brow and a constitutional capacity for idleness.  He talked much.  He had a fine theory that we do not leave enough to nature in matters of the garden.

Mr. Smallridge, the squire’s gardener, enjoyed a different habit of body and mind.  He was a man who lived for work and loved it; he read the journals proper to his business; he kept his subordinates to their labours from morn till eve; and idleness he loathed as the worst sin to be laid at p. 260the door of any agriculturist, great or small.  Mr. Hannaford alleged that the literature of his business was desirable for beginners, but he declared it to be unnecessary in his case.  If asked concerning his authorities, he would tap his forehead and say, “Books?  I don’t want no books.  ’Tis all here.”  No man possessed sure proofs that he could either read or write.

These two were ancient men, yet not old for Dartmoor, where those of hardy stock, who have weathered the ordeal of infancy, usually advance far into the vale of years before their taking off.  Joseph attributed his excellent health and spirits to a proper sense of what was due to himself in the matter of rest; while Matthew, on the other hand, assigned his physical and mental prosperity to hard work and temperance.  Now the men stood together in Joseph’s little garden and discussed general questions.

“If us was all your way of thinking, theer’d be no progress, an’ never a new pea growed an’ never a new potato taken to a show,” said Mr. Smallridge.

“I hate shows,” answered Joseph.  “’Tis flying in the face of nature an’ God Almighty, all this struggling for size.  If He’d a’ meant to grow twenty peas in a pod, an’ all so big as cherries, He’d have done it wi’ a turn o’ the wrist.  He didn’t do p. 261it, an’ for us worms to try an’ go awver the Lord in the matter of garden-stuff be so bad as bad can be.  ’Twas touching that very thing I fell out with the Reverend Truman.  ‘I be gwaine to show grapes, Joseph,’ he said to me last year; an’ I nodded an’ said, ‘Ess, sir,’ an’ went my even way.  Us didn’t show.  Then ’twas chrysanths.  Weern’t satisfied wi’ a nice, small, stuggy bloom, as nature meant, but must be pinching, an’ potting, an’ messing with soot an’ dirt, an’ watering twice a day—ten months’ toil for two months’ pleasure.  Then what?  A gert, ramshackly, auld blossom, like a mop dipped in a pail o’ paint.  However, I let his reverence do the work, an’ what credit was about I got myself.  Not that I wanted it.”

“As true a Christian your master was as ever walked in a garden, however,” declared Mr. Smallridge.  “I hope the new parson will prove so gude.”

“I be gwaine to see him this very day,” answered Joseph.  “’Tis my hope he’ll take me on to the vicarage, for the place wouldn’t be the place without me up theer.  I knaw every blade of grass an’ gooseberry bush in it—a very butivul kitchen-garden ’tis too.”

“An’ well out of sight of the sitting-room windows,” said Matthew Smallridge, grimly.

“As a kitchen-garden should be,” assented Joseph.  “Gude times they was,” he continued, “an’ p. 262I only hopes the Reverend Truman have got such a fine garden an’ such a’ honest man in it as he had here.”

“But no li’l maid to go round with him, poor soul!”

“A bright child his darter was.  Impatient also—like youth ever is.  Her’d bring me plants to coddle, an’ expect me to waste my precious time looking after her rubbish.  Then a thing would be struck for death, along of want of water or what not, an’ her’d come to me wi’ her li’l face all clouded.  ‘Can’t ’e make it well again, Joseph?’ her’d say; an’ I’d say, ‘No, missy; ’tis all up wi’ thicky geranium,’ or whatever ’twas.  ‘’Tis gwaine home.’  An’ her’d stamp her li’l foot so savage an’ ferocious, an’ say, `But it mustn’t go home!  I don’t want it to go home!  ’Tis your business not to let it go home!’ Poor little maiden!”

“An’ now she’ve gone home herself.”

“Ess.  She didn’t mean to be rude to an auld man.  But of course I couldn’t be bothered with such trash.  As to watering, I always leave it to Nature.  Who be us that we should knaw better what things want than her do?”

“Nature caan’t water green stuff onder glass, can her?”

“No; then why put it onder glass?  All this here talk ’bout glass houses is vanity an’ flying in the face of Providence.  If ’twas meant that grapes p. 263an’ tree-ferns an’ ’zaleas an’ hothouse stuff was to flourish in England, they’d be here doing of it on every mountain-side.  Us takes too much ’pon ourselves.  Same with prayers.  What be prayer most times but trying to get the A’mighty round to our way of thinking?  We’m too busy,—most of us,—an’ that’s the truth.”

“Jimmery!” exclaimed Matthew.  “I never did in all my born days hear tell of the like o’ you!  You won’t work an’ you won’t pray—’tis terrible.  All the same, if you don’t get the vicarage again, an’ come as under-gardener to the squire, as he’ve offered you, I tell you frankly, friends though we be, that you’ll have to work harder than you’ve worked for twenty years.”

“I know it very well, Matt,” said Mr. Hannaford.  “Your way an’ mine be different, root an’ branch; an’ I pray God as I may not have to come under you, for I’d hate it properly, an’ that’s the truth.  An’ I do work, an’ I do pray likewise; an’ I’d back my chance of going up aloft with my last shirt, if there was any to take the bet.  You’m too self-righteous along of your high wages—”

“Joseph! ’tis time you put on your black,” cried a voice from the cottage door.

Here grew a feeble honeysuckle that had been nailed up four years before, and still struggled gamely with a north aspect and neglect.

p. 264On the other side of the doorway was a thrush in a cage.  It appeared too spiritless even to mount its wooden perch, but sat on the floor of its prison and listlessly pecked at nothing.

Mrs. Hannaford had a thin, flat figure, a hard mouth, keen eyes and a face like a fowl.  Tremendous force of character marked her pale visage.  The grey curls that hung there on each side of her narrow forehead looked like steel shavings.

“Dress,” she said, “an’ be quick about it.  Ah, Mr. Smallridge—helping Joseph to waste his time.”

“Not me, ma’am; that’s about the only job he doesn’t want helping with.  I’ve just been telling your man that if Mr. Budd to the vicarage doan’t need him, an’ he takes squire’s offer an’ comes to me, theer must be more work an’ less talk.”

“The new parson will want him,” said Mrs. Hannaford, decidedly.  “Who should stick a spade in that earth after twenty-five years if not Joseph?”

“Very plants would cry out if anybody else was put awver them,” said Mr. Hannaford, sentimentally.

“Cry out for joy, I reckon,” murmured Matthew, but not loud enough for his friend’s wife to overhear him.  “Theer’s wan thing you should know,” he continued, changing the subject.  “Parson Budd be a tremendous Church of Englander, so I heard squire say.  He’ve got his knife into all chapel-people an’ free-thinkers an’ such like.”

p. 265“’Tis a free country,” answered Mrs. Hannaford, and her curls almost appeared to clatter as she shook her head.  “He’d better mind his awn business, which be faith, hope an’ charity, an’ not poke his nose into other people’s prayers!”

“As for religion,” declared Joseph, “the little as I’ve got time for in that line be done along with my missis an’ the Plymouth Brethren.  But theer ban’t no smallness in me.  Room in the Lard’s mansions for all of us; an’ if the roads be narrer, theer’s plenty of ’em, an’ plenty of gates to the Golden Jerusalem.”

Mrs. Hannaford frowned.

“You’m too free with your views, Joseph Hannaford,” she said.  “You’d best call to mind what pastor said to chapel last Sunday, ’bout the camel an’ the needle’s eye.  Many be called an’ few chosen, so theer’s an end of it.  The Brethren’s way be the right way an’ the strait way; an’ ban’t your business to be breaking gates into heaven for them as do wrong, an’ think wrong, an’ haven’t a spark of charity, an’ be busy about the Dowl’s work in every other cottage in this village.  I know what church folks be—nobody better.”

Mr. Smallridge, himself of the established religion, retreated before this outburst.

“Hell of a female that,” he said to himself.  “How the man can keep heart after all these years p. 266be a mystery.  Yet she sits light upon him, seemingly.”

Then Joseph, with some groans and grumbles, went to decorate himself, that the new incumbent might smile upon him and reappoint him to the care of the vicarage garden.  He shaved very carefully, washed, showed Mrs. Hannaford his finger-nails,—a matter he usually shirked,—donned his best attire, and finally started beside his wife to appear before Mr. Budd.

“’Tis a grievous choice,” he said; “an’ if the man doan’t take me on, I’ll have to go to the Hall under Smallridge—a very ill-convenient thing to think upon.”

“’Tis a matter of form, but better the Hall than any paltering with what’s right; an’ better be under Smallridge than against your conscience.”

“My conscience is very well, an’ always have been since I was a bwoy.”

“You’m a deal tu easy, however,” she answered sternly—“a deal tu easy, an’ you’ll very likely find that out when ’tis tu late.  Your conscience be like proud-flesh, I reckon: don’t hurt ’e ’cause ’tis past feeling.  I wish it pricked you so often as your rheumatics do.  ’Twould be a sign of grace.”

“You’m like poor Parson Truman’s li’l maiden wi’ her flowers, you be,” he retorted.  “Her was always dragging up the things to see how they p. 267prospered, an’ you’m always dragging up your conscience by the roots, same way, to see how ’tis faring.  I let mine bide.”

“You can’t,” snapped back Mrs. Hannaford.  “Conscience ban’t built to bide—no more’n a growing pear upon a tree.  It goes from gude to better, or else from bad to worse.  You ban’t so righteous-minded as I could wish ’e, Joseph; but I’ve done a deal for you since we’ve been man an’ wife; an’ if you’m spared ten year more, I lay I’ll have your conscience to work so hard as a man saving his own hay.”

“Pity you can’t live an’ let live, my dear,” answered the gardener.  “Even the weeds was made by God for His own ends, as I always told Truman.  You’m a very religious woman; an’ nobody knaws it better’n you; all the same, if folks’ consciences ax for such a power of watching, ’tis enough for every human to look after theer own, surely.”

“Why for don’t you do it, then?”

“Here’s the vicarage,” he answered.  “Us better not go in warm—might be against us.  I’ll dust my boots, an’ you’d best to cool your face, for ’tis glistening like the moon in the sky.”

Presently they stood before a busy newcomer.  He proved a young, plump, and pleasant man—a man fond of fishing and fox-hunting, a man of rotund voice and rotund figure.  Joseph’s heart p. 268grew hopeful.  Here was no dragon of horticulture, but one, like himself, who would live and let live, and doubtless leave the garden in the hands of its professional attendant.

“Your servant, sir,” he said.  “I hope your honour be very well an’ likes the church an’ the hunt—also the garden.”

“Mr. Joseph Hannaford, I suppose, and this is Mrs. Hannaford—good parishioners both, of course?  Sit down, Mrs. Hannaford, please.”

“’Tis in a nutshell, sir, an’ we won’t keep a busy gentleman from his business,” said the old woman, very politely.  “Joseph here have been gardener at the vicarage, man an’ bwoy, for twenty-five years—ever since theer was a garden at all.  He helped to cut out the peat an’ make the place, as was just a new-take from Dartymoor, though now ’tis so good stuff as ever growed a cabbage.”

“Ess fay; all rotted manure an’ butivul loam, so sweet as sugar, an’ drains like a sieve,” declared Joseph.

“I want a gardener, of course, and cannot do better than Mr. Hannaford, though I’m not sure if it isn’t too much for one elderly man.”

“It is!” almost shouted Joseph.  “Never a Bible prophet said a truer word!  Too much by half.  Not that I’d demean myself to ax for another man, but a bwoy I should have, an’ I hope your p. 269honour will give me a bwoy, if ’tis only to fetch an’ carry.”

“What wages did you get from Mr. Truman?”

“Pound a week; an’ another shilling would be a godsend, if I may say it without offence.”

“An’ up to squire’s they only offered him seventeen an’ sixpence, with all his ripe experience,” said Mrs. Hannaford.  “’Twould be a fine lesson in Christianity to squire, I’m sure, if you seed your way to twenty-one shilling.”

“Better than a waggon-load of sermons, if I may say so,” continued Joseph.

“A sight better, seeing squire’s not greatly ’dicted to church-gwaine, best of times,” chimed in Mrs. Hannaford.

“You’d be under-gardener there, no doubt?”

“Ezacally so, dear sir.  Under-gardener beneath Smallridge—a man three year younger than me.  But ban’t for me to tell my parts.  All the same, I wouldn’t work under Smallridge, not for money, if I could help it.  Very rash views he’ve got ’bout broccoli, not to name roots an’ sparrowgrass.”

“Terrible wilful touching fruit, also, they tells me,” added Mrs. Hannaford.

“Well, you must come, I suppose.  I could hardly turn you out of your old garden; nor is there any need to do so.”

“An’ thank you with all my heart, your p. 270honour; an’ you’ll never regret it so long as I be spared.”

“The extra shilling you shall have.  As to a boy, I want a stable-boy, and he’ll be able to lend you a hand in the summer.”

Mr. Hannaford nodded, touched his forehead, and mentally arranged a full programme for the boy.

“Enough said, then.  On Monday I shall expect you, and will walk round with you myself and say what I’ve got to say.  Good-bye for the present.”

Mr. Budd rose, and the old pair, with many expressions of satisfaction, were about to depart when their vicar spoke again.

“One more matter I may mention, though doubtless there is no necessity to do so with two such sensible people.  There are more sects and conventicles here than I like to find in such a very small parish.  Of course you come to church every Sunday, Mr. Hannaford?”

“As to that, your honour—” began Joseph; then his wife silenced him.

“We’m Plymouth Brethren from conscience,” she said.  “You ban’t gwaine to object, surely—you as have come here to preach charity an’ such like?”

Mr. Budd flushed.

“I’ve come to do my duty, ma’am, and don’t p. 271need to be told what that is by my parishioners, I hope.  All servants of the vicarage will, as a matter of course, go to church twice every Sunday, and upon week-days also, if I express any wish to that effect.”

“Let ’em, then,” answered the old woman, fiercely.  “You can bind ’em in chains of iron, if you will, an’ they’m feeble-hearted enough to let ’e.  But us won’t.  Us be what we be, an’ Plymouth Brethren have got somethin’ better to do than go hunting foxes, whether or no.  I’m a growed woman, an’ Joseph’s my husband, an’ he shan’t be in bondage to no man.  To squire’s garden he shall go, an’ save his sawl alive, so now then!  Gude evening, sir.”

“If I may have a tell—” began Joseph, in a tremor of emotion; but his wife cut him short.

“You may not,” she cried sternly.  “You come home.  Least said soonest mended.  Awnly I’m sorry to God as a Cæsar of all the Roosias have come to Postbridge instead of a Christian creature.”

So saying, she clutched Joseph and led him away.  But on their silent journey homeward Mr. Hannaford pondered this tremendous circumstance deeply.  Then, at his cottage gate, he rallied and spoke his mind.

“We’ve done wrong,” he said, “an’ I be gwaine back again to confess to it afore I sleep this night.”

p. 272“We’ve done right.  You’ll save your sawl an’ take seventeen shilling an’ sixpence.  You’ll be a martyr for conscience, an’ I be proud of ’e.”

“Martyr or no martyr, I knaw a silly auld woman, an’ I ban’t proud of ’e at all, nor of myself neither.  Anything in reason I’d do for you, an’ have done ever since I took you; but being put to work in cold blood under Smallridge is more’n I will do for you or for all the Plymouth Brothers that ever bleated hell-fire to a decent man.  I won’t go under Smallridge.  He’d make me sweat enough to float a ship; an’ at my time of life ’twould shorten my days.”

“The Lord’ll help &rsqu............