upon a recumbent stone in the
midst of the circle of Scorhill. Silent he sat and gazed into the
lichens of grey and gold that crowned each rude pillar of the lonely
ring. These, as it seemed, were the very eyes of the granite, but to
Martin they represented but the cloak of yesterday, beneath which
centuries of secrets were hidden. Only the stones and the eternal west
wind, that had seen them set up and still blew over them, could tell him
anything he sought to know.

"A Knight of Forlorn Hopes," mused the man. "So it is, so it is. The
grasshopper, rattling his little kettledrum there, knows nearly as much
of this hoary secret as I do; and the bird, that prunes his wing on the
porphyry, and is gone again. Not till some Damnonian spirit rises from
the barrow, not till some chieftain of these vanished hosts shall take
shape out of the mists and speak, may we glean a grain of this buried
knowledge. And who to-day would believe ten thousand Damnonian ghosts,
if they stirred here once again and thronged the Moor and the moss and
the ruined stone villages with their moonbeam shapes?

"Gone for ever; and she--my Chris--my dear--is she to dwell in the
darkness for all time, too? O God, I would rather hear one whisper of
her voice, feel one touch of her brown hand, than learn the primal truth
of every dumb stone wonder in the world!"

CHAPTER III

CONCERNING THE GATE-POST

So that good store of roots and hay continue for the cattle during those
months of early spring while yet the Moor is barren; so that the
potato-patch prospers and the oats ripen well; so that neither pony nor
bullock is lost in the shaking bogs, and late summer is dry enough to
allow of ample peat-storing--when all these conditions prevail, your
moorman counts his year a fat one. The upland farmers of Devon are in
great measure armed against the bolts of chance by the nature of their
lives, the grey character of even their most cheerful experiences and
the poverty of their highest ambitions. Their aspirations, becoming
speedily cowed by ill-requited toil and eternal hardship, quickly dwarf
and shrink, until even the most sanguine seldom extend hope much beyond
necessity.

Will grumbled, growled, and fought on, while Phoebe, who knew how nobly
the valleys repaid husbandry, mourned in secret that his energetic
labours here could but produce such meagre results. Very gradually their
environment stamped its frosty seal on man and woman; and by the