re to say that, do'e? An' me as good a man, an' better, than you
or your brother either! Money--you remind me I'm--Theer! You can go to
blue, blazin' hell for your granite crosses--that's wheer you can
go--you or any other poking, prying pelican! Offer money to me, would
'e? Who be you, or any other man, to offer me money for wasted time? As
if I was a road scavenger or another man's servant! God's truth! you
forget who you'm talkin' to!"

"This is to purposely misunderstand me, Blanchard. I never, never, meant
any such thing. Am I one to gratuitously insult or offend another?
Typical this! Your cursed temper it is that keeps you back in the world
and makes a failure of you," answered the student of stones, his own
temper nearly lost under exceptional provocation.

"Who says I be a failure?" roared Will in return. "What do you know, you
grey, dreamin' fule, as to whether I'm successful or not so? Get you
gone off my land or--"

"I'll go, and readily enough. I believe you're mad. That's the
conclusion I'm reluctantly driven to--mad. But don't for an instant
imagine your lunatic stupidity is going to stand between the world and
this discovery, because it isn't."

He strapped on his satchel, picked up his stick, put his hat on
straight, and prepared to depart, breathing hard.

"Go," snorted Will; "go to your auld stones--they 'm the awnly fit
comp'ny for 'e. Bruise your silly shins against 'em, an' ax 'em if a
moorman's in the right or wrong to paart wi' his gate-post to the fust
fule as wants it!"

Martin Grimbal strode off without replying, and Will, in a sort of grim
good-humour at this victory, returned to milking his cows. The
encounter, for some obscure reason, restored him to amiability. He
reviewed his own dismal part in it with considerable satisfaction, and,
after going indoors and eating a remarkably good breakfast, he lighted
his pipe and, in the most benignant of moods, went out with a horse and
cart to gather withered fern.

CHAPTER IV

MARTIN'S RAID

Mrs. Blanchard now dwelt alone, and all her remaining interests in life
were clustered about Will. She perceived that his enterprise by no means
promised to fulfil the hopes of those who loved him, and realised too
late that the qualities which enabled her father to wrest a living from
the moorland farm were lacking in her son. He, of course, explained it
otherwise, and pointed to the changes of the times and an universal fall
in the price of