“I swear, on my sacred honour, there’s no plot against you.  I’ve never spoken to a soul about this thing, nor has a soul spoken of it to me; that’s the truth.”

“Rot you, and your sacred honour too!  Go, and take your lies with you, and keep your own friends henceforth, and never cross my threshold more—­you or your sacred, stinking honour either.”

Martin rose from his chair dazed and bewildered.  He had seen his brother’s passion wither up many a rascal in the past; but he himself had never suffered until now, and the savagery of this language hurled against his own pure motives staggered him.  He, of course, knew nothing about Will Blanchard’s enterprise, and his blundering and ill-judged effort to restrain his brother from marrying Phoebe was absolutely disinterested.  It had been a tremendous task to him to speak on this delicate theme, and regard for John alone actuated him; now he departed without another word and went blankly to the little new stone house he had taken and furnished on the outskirts of Chagford under Middledown.  He walked along the straight street of whitewashed cots that led him to his home, and reflected with dismay on this catastrophe.  The conversation with his brother had scarcely occupied five minutes; its results promised to endure a lifetime.

Meanwhile, and at the identical hour of this tremendous rupture, Chris Blanchard, well knowing that the morrow would witness Phoebe’s secret marriage to her brother, walked down to see her.  It happened that a small party filled the kitchen of Monks Barton, and the maid who answered her summons led Chris through the passage and upstairs to Phoebe’s own door.  There the girls spoke in murmurs together, while various sounds, all louder than their voices, proceeded from the kitchen below.  There were assembled the miller, Billy Blee, Mr. Chapple, and one Abraham Chown, the police inspector of Chagford, a thin, black-bearded man, oppressed with the cares of his office.

“They be arranging the programme of festive delights,” explained Phoebe.  “My heart sinks in me every way I turn now.  All the world seems thinking about what’s to come; an’ I knaw it never will.”

“’T is a wonnerful straange thing to fall out.  Never no such happened before, I reckon.  But you ‘m doin’ right by the man you love, an’ that’s a thought for ‘e more comfortin’ than gospel in a pass like this.  A promise is a promise, and you’ve got to think of all your life stretching out afore you.  Will’s jonic, take him the right way, and that you knaw how to do—­a straight, true chap as should make any wife happy.  Theer’ll be waitin’ afterwards an’ gude need for all the patience you’ve got; but wance the wife of un, allus the wife of un; that’s a butivul thing to bear in mind.”

“’T is so; ‘t is everything.  An’ wance we’m wed, I’ll never tell a lie again, an’ atone for all I have told, an’ do right towards everybody.”

“You caan’t say no fairer.  Be any matter I can help ’e with?”