Will, you've got nobody 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 passed 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 passed 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 shaggy 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 crys