und thereon full scope and play. He was familiar with
most of those literary productions devoted to the land, and now
developed an ambition to add some result of personal observation and
research to extant achievements. He went to work with method and
determination, and it was not until respectable accumulations of notes
and memoranda already appeared as the result of his labours that the man
finally--almost reluctantly--reconciled himself to the existence of
another and deeper interest in his life than that furnished by the grey
granite monuments of the Moor. Hide it from himself he could no longer,
nor yet wholly from others. As in wild Devon it is difficult at any time
to escape from the murmur of waters unseen, so now the steady flood of
this disquieting emotion made music at all waking hours in Martin's
archaeologic mind, shattered his most subtle theories unexpectedly, and
oftentimes swept the granite clean out of his head on the flood of a
golden river.

After three months of this beautiful but disquieting experience, Martin
resigned himself to the conclusion that he was in love with Chris
Blanchard. He became very cautious and timid before the discovery. He
feared much and contemplated the future with the utmost distrust. Doubt
racked him; he checked himself from planning courses of conduct built on
mad presumptions. By night, as a sort of debauch, in those hours when
man is awake and fancy free, he conceived of a happy future with Chris
and little children about him; at morning light, if any shadow of that
fair vision returned, he blushed and looked round furtively, as though
some thought-reader's cold eye must be sneering at such presumption. He
despaired of finding neutral ground from which his dry mind could make
itself attractive to a girl. Now and again he told himself that the new
emotion must be crushed, in that it began to stand between him and the
work he had set himself to do for his county; but during more sanguine
moods he challenged this decision and finally, as was proper and right,
the flood of the man's first love drowned menhir and hut-circle fathoms
deep, and demanded all his attention at the cost of mental peace. An
additional difficulty appeared in the fact that the Blanchard family
were responsible for John Grimbal's misfortune; and Martin, without
confusing the two circumstances, felt that before him really lay the
problem of a wife or a brother. When first he heard of the event that
set C