and his residence in Chagford had needed no special comment save
for an important incident resulting therefrom.

Phoebe Lyddon it was who in all innocence and ignorance set rolling a
pebble that finally fell in thundering avalanches; and her chance word
was uttered at her father's table on an occasion when John and Martin
Grimbal were supping at Monks Barton.

The returned natives, and more especially the elder, had been much at
the mill since their reappearance. John, indeed, upon one pretext or
another, scarcely spent a day without calling. His rough kindness
appealed to Phoebe, who at first suspected no danger from it, while Mr.
Lyddon encouraged the man and made him and his brother welcome at all
times.

John Grimbal, upon the morning that preceded the present supper party,
had at last found a property to his taste. It might, indeed, have been
designed for him. Near Whiddon it lay, in the valley of the Moreton
Road, and consisted of a farm and the ruin of a Tudor mansion. The
latter had been tenanted until the dawn of this century, but was since
then fallen into decay. The farm lands stretched beneath the crown of
Cranbrook, hard by the historic "Bloody Meadow," a spot assigned to that
skirmish between Royalist and Parliamentary forces during 1642 which
cost brilliant young Sidney Godolphin his life. Here, or near at hand,
the young man probably fell, with a musket-bullet in his leg, and
subsequently expired at Chagford[1] leaving the "misfortune of his death
upon a place which could never otherwise have had a mention to the
world," according to caustic Chancellor Clarendon.

[1] _At Chagford._ The place of the poet's passing is believed
to have been an ancient dwelling-house adjacent to St. Michael's Church.
At that date it was a private residence of the Whiddon family; but
during later times it became known as the "Black Swan Inn," or tavern (a
black swan being the crest of Sir John Whiddon, Judge of Queen's Bench
in the first Mary's reign); while to-day this restored Mansion appears
as the hostelry of the "Three Crowns."

Upon the aforesaid ruins, fashioned after the form of a great E, out of
compliment to the sovereign who occupied the throne at the period of the
decayed fabric's erection, John Grimbal proposed to build his habitation
of red brick and tile. The pertaining farm already had a tenant, and
represented four hundred acres of arable land, with possibilities of
development; snug woods wound along