sually occupied his
mind, to total exclusion of all other affairs; but to-day even more
momentous events awaited him in the immediate future, and he looked from
his companion along the great valley to where Oke Tor appeared, shrunk
to a mere grey stone at the farther end. Of John Grimbal's life, it may
now be said that it drifted into a confirmed and bitter misogyny. He saw
no women, spoke of the sex with disrespect, and chose his few friends
among men whose sporting and warlike instincts chimed with his own.
Sport he pursued with dogged pertinacity, but the greater part of his
leisure was devoted to the formation of a yeomanry corps at Chagford,
and in this design he had made good progress. He still kept his wrongs
sternly before his mind, and when the old bitterness began to grow
blunted, deliberately sharpened it again, strangling alike the good work
of time and all emotions of rising contentment and returning peace.
Where was the wife whose musical voice and bright eyes should welcome
his daily home-coming? Where were the laughing and pattering-footed
little ones? Of these priceless treasures the man on the Moor had robbed
him. His great house was empty and cheerless. Thus he could always blow
the smouldering fires into active flame by a little musing on the past;
but how long it might be possible to sustain his passion for revenge
under this artificial stimulation of memory remained to be seen. As yet,
at any rate, the contemplation of Will Blanchard's ruin was good to
Grimbal, and the accident of his discovery that Clement Hicks knew some
secret facts to his enemy's disadvantage served vastly to quicken the
lust for a great revenge. From the first he had determined to drag
Clement's secret out of him sooner or later, and had, until his recent
offer of the Red House Farm, practised remarkable patience. Since then,
however, a flicker of apparent prosperity which overtook the bee-keeper
appeared to diminish Grimbal's chances perceptibly; but with the sudden
downfall of Clement's hopes the other's ends grew nearer again, and at
the last it had scarcely surprised him to receive the proposal of Hicks.
So now he stood within an hour or two of the desired knowledge, and his
mind was consequently a little abstracted from the matter in hand.

The battery, consisting of four field-guns, was brought into action in
the direction of the upper end of the valley, while Major Tremayne, its
commanding officer and John Grimbal's acqu