any days. All this suffering will vanish quicker
than a dream then. Justice is great, but mercy is greater. Yours is the
privilege of mercy, and yet justice shall not suffer either--not if I
know Will Blanchard."

They talked long and drank more than usual, while the elder man's grim
and moody spirit lightened a little before his determination and his
wine. The reek of past passions, the wreckage of dead things, seemed to
be sweeping out of his mind. He forgot the hour and their engagement
until the time fixed for that conference was past. Then he looked at his
watch, rose from the table, and hurried to the hall.

"Let us not go," urged Martin. "They will do very well without us, I am
sure."

But John's only answer was to pull on his driving gloves. He anticipated
some satisfaction from the committee meeting; he suspected, indeed, that
he would be asked to take the chair at it, and, like most men, he was
not averse to the exercise of a little power in a small corner.

"We must go," he said. "I have important suggestions to make, especially
concerning the volunteers. A sham fight on Scorhill would be a happy
thought. We'll drive fast, and only be twenty minutes late."

A dog-cart had been waiting half an hour, and soon the brothers quickly
whirled down Red House avenue. A groom dropped from behind and opened
the gate; then it was all his agility could accomplish to scramble into
his seat again as a fine horse, swinging along at twenty miles an hour,
trotted towards Chagford.

CHAPTER XV

A BATTLE

Silent and motionless sat Blanchard, on the fringe of a bank at the
coppice edge. He watched the stars move onward and the shadows cast by
moonlight creep from west to north, from north to east. Hawthorn scented
the night and stood like masses of virgin silver under the moon; from
the Red House 'owl tree'--a pollarded elm, sacred to the wise bird--came
mewing of brown owls; and once a white one struck, swift as a streak of
feathered moonlight, on the copse edge, and passed so near to Blanchard
that he saw the wretched shrew-mouse in its talons. "'Tis for the young
birds somewheers," he thought; "an' so they'll thrive an' turn out
braave owlets come bimebye; but the li'l, squeakin', blind shrews,
what'll they do when no mother comes home-along to 'em?"

He mused drearily upon this theme, but suddenly started, for there came
the echo of slow steps in the underwood behind him. They sank into
silence and set Will