after the incidents last related he sat there smoking his
pipe, while his eyes roved upon the scene subtended before him. The hill
fell abruptly away, and near the bottom glimmered whitewashed cots along
a winding road. Still lower down extended marshy common land, laced with
twinkling watercourses and dotted with geese; while beyond, in many a
rise and fall and verdant undulation, the country rolled onwards through
Teign valley and upwards towards the Moor. The expanse seen from this
lofty standpoint extended like a mighty map, here revealing a patchwork
of multicoloured fields, here exhibiting tracts of wild waste and wood,
here beautifully indicating by a misty line, seen across ascending
planes of forest, the course of the distant river, here revealing the
glitter of remote waters damaskeened with gold. Little farms and
outlying habitations were scattered upon the land; and beyond them,
rising steadily to the sky-line, the regions of the Moor revealed their
larger attributes, wider expanses, more savage and abrupt configurations
of barren heath and weathered tor. The day passed gradually from gloom
to brightness, and the distance, already bathed in light, gleamed out of
a more sombre setting, where the foreground still reflected the shadows
of departing clouds, like a picture of great sunshine framed in
darkness. But the last vapours quickly vanished; the day grew very hot
and, as the sky indicated noon, all things beneath Clement's eyes were
soaked in a splendour of June sunlight. He watched a black thread lying
across a meadow five miles away. First it stretched barely visible
athwart the distance green; in half an hour it thickened without
apparent means; within an hour it had absorbed an eighth part at least
of the entire space. Though the time was very unusual for tilling of
land, Hicks knew that the combined operations of three horses, a man,
and a plough were responsible for this apparition, and he speculated as
to how many tremendous physical and spiritual affairs of life are thus
wrought by agents not visible to the beholder. Thus were his own
thoughts twisted back to those speculations which now perpetually
haunted them like the incubus of a dream. What would Will Blanchard say
if he woke some morning to find his secret in John Grimbal's keeping?
And, did any such thing happen, there must certainly be a mystery about
it; for Blanchard could no more prove how his enemy came to learn his
secret than might some