"But for your awn peace of mind it might be wisest to dig the cross up.

I listened by the window an' heard Billy Blee tellin' of awful cusses, an' he 's wise wi'out knawin' it sometimes."

"That's all witchcraft an' stuff an' nonsense, an' you ought to knaw better, Phoebe. 'T is as bad as setting store on the flight o' magpies, or gettin' a dead tooth from the churchyard to cure toothache, an'

such-like folly."

"Ban't folly allus, Will; theer 's auld tried wisdom in some ancient sayings."

"Well, you guide your road by my light if you want to be happy. 'T is for you I uses all my thinking brain day an' night--for your gude an'

the li'l man's."

"I knaw--I knaw right well 't is so, dear Will, an' I'm sorry I spoke so quick."

"I'll forgive 'e before you axes me, sweetheart. Awnly you must larn to trust me, an' theer 's no call for you to fear. Us must speak out sometimes, an' I did just now, an' 't is odds but some of them chaps, Grimbal included, may have got a penn'orth o' wisdom from me."

"So 't is, then," she said, cuddling to him; "an' you'll do well to sleep now; an'--an' never tell again, Will, you've got n.o.body but your mother while I'm above ground, 'cause it's against justice an' truth an'

very terrible for me to hear."

"'T was a thoughtless speech," admitted Will, "an' I'm sorry I spake it.

'T was a hasty word an' not to be took serious."

They slept, while the moon wove wan harmonies of ebony and silver into Newtake. A wind woke, proclaiming morning, as yet invisible; and when it rustled dead leaves or turned a chimney-cowl, the dog at the gate stirred and growled and grated his chain against the granite cross.

CHAPTER V

WINTER

As Christmas again approached, adverse conditions of weather brought like anxieties to a hundred moormen besides Will Blanchard, but the widespread nature of the trouble by no means diminished his individual concern. A summer of unusual splendour had pa.s.sed unblessed away, for the sustained drought represented scanty hay and an aftermath of meagre description. Cereals were poor, with very little straw, and the heavy rains of November arrived too late to save acres of starved roots on high grounds. Thus the year became responsible for one prosperous product alone: rarely was it possible to dry so well those stores gathered from the peat beds. Huge fires, indeed, glowed upon many a hearth, but the glory of them served only to illumine anxious faces. A hard winter was threatened, and the succeeding spring already appeared as no vision to welcome, but a hungry spectre to dread.

Then, with the last week of the old year, winter swept westerly on hyperborean winds, and when these were pa.s.sed a tremendous frost won upon the world. Day followed day of weak, clear sunshine and low temperature. The sun, upon his shortest journeys, showed a fiery face as he sulked along the stony ridges of the Moor, and gazed over the ice-chained wilderness, the frozen waters, and the dark mosses that never froze, but lowered black, like wounds on a white skin. Dartmoor slept insensible under granite and ice; no sheep-bell made music; no flocks wandered at will; only the wind moaned in the dead bells of the heather; only the foxes slunk round cot and farm; only the s.h.a.ggy ponies stamped and snorted under the lee of the tors and thrust their smoking muzzles into sheltered clefts and crannies for the withered green stuff that kept life in them. Snow presently softened the outlines of the hills, set silver caps on the granite, and brought the distant horizon nearer to the eye under crystal-clear atmosphere. Many a wanderer, thus deceived, plodded hopefully forward at sight of smoke above a roof-tree, only to find his bourne, that seemed so near, still weary miles away.

The high Moors were a throne for death. Cold below freezing-point endured throughout the hours of light and grew into a giant when the sun and his winter glory had huddled below the hills.

Newtake squatted like a toad upon this weary waste. Its crofts were bare and frozen two feet deep; its sycamores were naked save for snow in the larger forks, and one shivering concourse of dead leaves, where a bough had been broken untimely, and thus held the foliage. Suffering almost animate peered from its leaded windows; the building scowled; cattle lowed through the hours of day, and a steam arose from their red hides as they crowded together for warmth. Often it gleamed mistily in the light of Will's lantern when at the dead icy hour before dawn he went out to his beasts. Then he would rub their noses, and speak to them cheerfully, and note their congealed vapours where these had ascended and frozen in shining spidery hands of ice upon the walls and rafters of the byre. Fowls, silver-spangled and black, scratched at the earth from habit, fought for the daily grain with a ferocity the summer never saw, stalked spiritless in puffed plumage about the farmyard and collected with subdued clucking upon their roosts in a barn above the farmyard carts as soon as the sun had dipped behind the hills. Ducks complained vocally, and as they slipped on the gla.s.sy pond they quacked out a mournful protest against the times.

The snow which fell did not melt, but shone under the red sunshine, powdered into dust beneath hoof and heel; every cart-rut was full of thin white ice, like ground window-gla.s.s, that cracked drily and split and tinkled to hobnails or iron-shod wheel. The snow from the house-top, thawed by the warmth within, ran dribbling from the eaves and froze into icicles as thick as a man's arm. These glittered almost to the ground and refracted the sunshine in their prisms.

Warm-blooded life suffered for the most part silently, but the inanimate fabric of the farm complained with many a creak and crack and groan in the night watches, while Time's servant the frost gnawed busily at old timbers and thrust steel fingers into brick and mortar. Only the hut-circles, grey glimmering through the snow on Metherill, laughed at those cruel nights, as the Neolithic men who built them may have laughed at the desperate weather of their day; and the cross beside Blanchard's gate, though an infant in age beside them, being fashioned of like material, similarly endured. Of more lasting substance was this stone than an iron tongue stuck into it to latch the gate, for the metal fretted fast and shed rust in an orange streak upon the granite.

Where first this relic had risen, when yet its craftsman's work was perfect and before the centuries had diminished its just proportions, no living man might say. Martin Grimbal suspected that it had marked a meeting-place, indicated some Cistercian way, commemorated a notable deed, or served to direct the moorland pilgrim upon his road to that trinity of great monasteries which flourished aforetime at Plympton, at Tavistock, and at Buckland of the Monks; but between its first uprising and its last, a duration of many years doubtless extended.

The antiquary's purpose had been to rescue the relic, judge, by close study of the hidden part, to what date it might be a.s.signed, then investigate the history of Newtake Farm, and endeavour to trace the cross if possible. After his second repulse, however, and following upon a conversation with Phoebe, whom he met at Chagford, Martin permitted the matter to remain in abeyance. Now he set about regaining Will's friendship'in a gradual and natural manner. That done, he trusted to disinter the coveted granite at some future date and set it up on sanctified ground in Chagford churchyard, if the true nature of the relic justified that course. For the present, however, he designed no step, for his purpose was to visit the Channel Islands early in the new year, that he might study their testimony to prehistoric times.

A winter, to cite whose parallel men looked back full twenty years, still held the land, though February had nearly run. Blanchard daily debated the utmost possibility of his resources with Phoebe, and fought the inclement weather for his early lambs. Such light as came into life at Newtake was furnished by little Will, who danced merrily through ice and snow, like a scarlet flower in his brilliant coat. The cold pleased him; he trod the slippery duck pond in triumph, his bread-and-milk never failed. To Phoebe her maternal right in the infant seemed recompense sufficient for all those tribulations existence just now brought with it; from which conviction resulted her steady courage and cheerfulness.

Her husband's nebulous rationalism clouded Phoebe's religious views not at all. She daily prayed to Christ for her child's welfare, and went to church whenever she could, at the express command of her father. A flash of folly from Will had combined with hard weather to keep the miller from any visit to Newtake. Mr. Lyddon, on the beginning of the great frost, had sent two pairs of thick blankets from the Monks Barton stores to Phoebe, and Will, opening the parcel during his wife's absence, resented the gift exceedingly, and returned it by the bearer with a curt message of thanks and the information that he did not need them. Much hurt, the donor turned his face from Newtake for six weeks after this incident, and Phoebe, who knew nothing of the matter, marvelled at her father's lengthy and unusual silence.

As for Will, during these black days, the steadfast good temper of his wife almost irritated him; but he saw the prime source of her courage, and himself loved their small son dearly. Once a stray journal fell into his hands, and upon an article dealing with emigration he built secret castles in the air, and grew more happy for the s.p.a.ce of a week. His mother ailed a little through the winter, and he often visited her. But in her presence he resolutely put off gloom, spoke with sanguine tongue of the prosperity he foresaw during the coming spring, and always foretold the frost must break within four-and-twenty-hours. Damaris Blanchard was therefore deceived in some measure, and when Will spent five shillings upon a photograph of his son, she felt that the Newtake prospects must at least be more favourable than she feared, and let the circ.u.mstance of the picture be generally known.

Not until the middle of March came a thaw, and then unchained waters and melted snows roared and tumbled from the hills through every coomb and valley. Each gorge, each declivity contributed an unwonted torrent; the quaking bogs shivered as though beneath them monsters turned in sleep or writhed in agony; the hoa.r.s.e cry of Teign betokened new tribulations to the ears of those who understood; and over the Moor there rolled and crowded down a sodden mantle of mist, within whose chilly heart every elevation of note vanished for days together. Wrapped in impenetrable folds were the high lands, and the gigantic vapour stretched a million dripping tentacles over forests and wastes into the valleys beneath. Now it crept even to the heart of the woods; now it stealthily dislimned in lonely places; now it redoubled its density and dominated all things.

The soil steamed and exuded vapour as a soaked sponge, and upon its surcharged surface splashes and streaks and sheets of water shone pallid and ash-coloured, like blind eyes, under the eternal mists and rains.

These acc.u.mulations threw back the last glimmer of twilight and caught the first grey signal of approaching dawn; while the land, contrariwise, had welcomed night while yet wan sunsets struggled with the rain, and continued to cherish darkness long after morning was in the sky. Every rut and hollow, every scooped cup on the tors was br.i.m.m.i.n.g now; springs unnumbered and unknown had burst their secret places; the water floods tumbled and thundered until their rough laughter rang like a knell in the ears of the husbandmen; and beneath crocketed pinnacles of half a hundred church towers rose the mournful murmur of prayer for fair weather.

There came an afternoon in late March when Mr. Blee returned to Monks Barton from Chagford, stamped the mud off his boots and leggings, shook his brown umbrella, and entered the kitchen to find his master reading the Bible.

"'Tis all set down, Blee," exclaimed Mr. Lyddon with the triumphant voice of a discoverer. "These latter rains be displayed in the Book, according to my theory that everything 's theer!"

"Pity you didn't find 'em out afore they comed; then us might have bought the tarpaulins cheap in autumn, 'stead of payin' through the nose for 'em last month. Now 't is fancy figures for everything built to keep out rain. Rabbit that umberella! It's springed a leak, an' the water's got down my neck."

"Have some hot spirits, then, an' listen to this--all set out in Isaiah forty-one--eighteen: 'I will open rivers in high places and fountains in the midst of the valleys; I will make the wilderness a pool of water and the dry land springs of water.' Theer! If that ban't a picter of the present plague o' rain, what should be?"

"So 't is; an' the fountains in the midst of the valleys be the awfullest part. Burnish it all! The high land had the worst of the winter, but we in the low coombs be gwaine to get the worst o' the spring--safe as water allus runs down-long."

"'T will find its awn level, which the prophet knawed."

"I wish he knawed how soon."

"'T is in the Word, I'll wager. I may come upon it yet."

"The airth be d.a.m.n near drowned, an' the air's thick like a washin'-day everywheers, an' a terrible braave sight o' rain unshed in the elements yet."

"'T will pa.s.s, sure as Noah seed a rainbow."

"Ess, 't will pa.s.s; but Monks Barton's like to be washed to Fingle Bridge fust. Oceans o' work waitin', but what can us be at? Theer ban't a bit o' land you couldn't most swim across."

"Widespread trouble, sure 'nough--all awver the South Hams, high an'

low."

"By the same token, I met Will Blanchard an hour agone. Gwaine in the dispensary, he was. The li'l bwoy's queer--no gert ill, but a bit of a tisseck on the lungs. He got playin' 'bout, busy as a rook, in the dirt, and catched cold."

Miller Lyddon was much concerned at this bad news.

"Oh, my gude G.o.d!" he exclaimed, "that's worse hearin' than all or any you could have fetched down. What do Doctor say?"

"Wasn't worth while to call un up, so Will thought. Ban't nothin' to kill a beetle, or I lay the mother of un would have Doctor mighty soon.

Will reckoned to get un a dose of physic--an' a few sweeties. Nature's all for the young buds. He won't come to no hurt."

"Fust thing morning send a lad riding to Newtake," ordered Mr. Lyddon.

"Theer's no sleep for me to-night, no, nor any more at all till I hear tell the dear tibby-lamb's well again. 'Pon my soul, I wonder that headstrong man doan't doctor the cheel hisself."

"Maybe he will. Ban't nothin 's beyond him."

"I'll go silly now. If awnly Mrs. Blanchard was up theer wi' Phoebe."

"Doan't you grizzle about it. The bwoy be gwaine to make auld bones yet--hard as a nut he be. Give un years an' he'll help carry you to the graave in the fulness of time, I promise 'e," said Billy, in his comforting way.