temperament enables him to escape oceans of unrest, hurricanes of torment; but self-distrust and humility have their value, and those who are oppressed by them fall into no such pitiable extreme as that too hopeful lover on whose sanguine ear “No” falls like a thunderbolt from red lips that were already considered to have spoken “Yes.”  A suitor who plunges from lofty peaks of assured victory into failure falls far indeed; but Martin Grimbal stood little chance of suffering in that sort as his brother John had done.

The antiquary spoke presently, fearing he must seem too self-absorbed, but Clement had little to say.  Yet a chance meeting twisted the conversation round to its former topic as they neared home.  Upon Chagford Bridge appeared Miller Lyddon and Mr. Blee.  The latter had been whitewashing the apple-tree stems—­a course to which his master attached more importance than that pursued on Old Christmas Eve—­and through the gathering dusk the trunks now stood out livid and wan as a regiment of ghosts.

“Heard from your brother since he left?” Mr. Lyddon inquired after evening greetings.

“I cannot yet.  I hope he may write, but you are more likely to hear than I.”

“Not me.  I’m nothing to un now.”

“Things will come right.  Don’t let it prey on your mind.  No woman ever made a good wife who didn’t marry where her heart was,” declared Martin, exhibiting some ignorance of the subject he presumed to discuss.

“Ah! you was ag’in’ us, I mind,” said the miller, drawing in.  “He said as much that terrible night.”

“He was wrong—­utterly.  I only spoke for his good.  I saw that your daughter couldn’t stand the sight of him and shivered if he touched her.  It was my duty to speak.  Strange you didn’t see too.”

“So easy to talk afterwards!  I had her spoken word, hadn’t I?  She’d never lied in all her life afore.  Strange if I had seen, I reckon.”

“You frightened her into falsehood.  Any girl might have been expected to lie in that position,” said Clement coolly; then Mr. Blee, who had been fretting to join the conversation, burst into it unbidden.

“Be gormed if I ban’t like a cat on hot bricks to hear ’e! wan might think as Miller was the Devil hisself for cruelty instead o’ bein’, as all knaws, the most muty-hearted[4] faither in Chagford.”

[4] Muty-hearted = soft-hearted.

“As to that, I doan’t knaw, Billy,” declared Mr. Lyddon stoutly; “I be a man as metes out to the world same measure as I get from the world.  Right is right, an’ law is law; an’ if I doan’t have the law of Will Blanchard—­”

“There’s little enough you can do, I believe,” said Hicks; “and what satisfaction lies in it, I should like to know, if it’s not a rude question?”

The old man answered with some bitterness, and explained his power.

“William Blanchard’s done abduction, according to Lawyer Bellamy of Plymouth; an’ abduction’s felony, and that’s a big thing, however you look ’pon it.”