Sick with himself at this pitiable lapse, shaken in his self-respect, desolate, unsettled, and uncertain of the very foundations on which he had hitherto planted his life, the elder man existed through a black month, then braced himself again, looked out into the world, set his dusty desk in order, and sought once more amidst the relics of the past for comfort and consolation.  He threw himself upon his book and told himself that it must surely reward his pains; he toiled mightily at his lonely task, and added a little to man’s knowledge.

Once it happened that the Rev. Shorto-Champernowne met Martin.  Riding over the Moor after a visit to his clerical colleague of Gidleigh, the clergyman trotted through Scorhill Circle, above northern Teign, and seeing a well-known parishioner, drew up a while.

“How prosper your profound studies?” he inquired.  “Do these evidences of aboriginal races lead you to any conclusions of note?  For my part, I am not wholly devoid of suspicion that a man might better employ his time, though I should not presume to make any such suggestion to you.”

“You may be right; but one is generally unwise to stamp on his ruling passion if it takes him along an intellectual road.  These cryptic stones are my life.  I want to get the secret of them or find at least a little of it.  What are these lonely rings?  Where are we standing now?  In a place of worship, where men prayed to the thunder and the sun and stars?  Or a council chamber?  Or a court of justice, that has seen many a doom pronounced, much red blood flow?  Or is it a grave?  ’T is the fashion to reject the notion that they represent any religious purpose; yet I cannot see any argument against the theory.  I go on peeping and prying after a spark of truth.  I probe here, and in the fallen circle yonder towards Cosdon; I follow the stone rows to Fernworthy; I trudge again and again to the Grey Wethers—­that shattered double ring on Sittaford Tor.  I eat them up with my eyes and repeople the heath with those who raised them.  Some clay a gleam of light may come.  And if it does, it will reach me through deep study on those stone men of old.  It is along the human side of my investigations I shall learn, if I learn anything at all.”

“I hope you may achieve your purpose, though the memoranda and data are scanty.  Your name is mentioned in the Western Morning News as a painstaking inquirer.”

“Yet when theories demand proof—­that’s the rub!”

“Yes, indeed.  You are a knight of forlorn hopes, Grimbal,” answered the Vicar, alluding to Martin’s past search for Chris as much as to his present archaeologic ambitions.  Then he trotted on over the river, and the pedestrian remained as before seated upon a recumbent stone in the midst of the circle of Scorhill.  Silent he sat and gazed into the lichens of grey and gold that crowned each rude pillar of the lonely ring.  These, as it seemed, were the very eyes of the granite, but to Martin they represented but the cloak of yesterday, beneath which centuries of secrets were hidden.  Only the stones and the eternal west wind, that had seen them set up and still blew over them, could tell him anything he sought to know.