other,
showing not a little anger the while; "I'm dumb henceforward."

"I hope you'll let your brain influence you towards reason. 'Tis a
fool's trick to turn your back on the chance of a lifetime. Better think
twice. And second thoughts are like to prove best worth following. You
know where to find me at any rate. I'll give you six weeks to decide
about it."

John Grimbal waited, hoping that Hicks might yet change his mind before
he took his leave; but the bee-keeper made no answer. His companion
therefore broke into a sharp trot and left him. Whereupon Clement stood
still a moment, then he turned back and, forgetting all about Chris,
proceeded slowly homewards to Chagford, deep in thought and heartily
astonished at himself. No one could have prompted his enemy to a more
critical moment for this great attack; no demon could have sent the
master of the Red House with a more tempting proposal; and yet Hicks
found himself resisting the lure without any particular effort or
struggle. On the one side this man had offered him all the things his
blood and brain craved; on the other his life still stretched drearily
forward, and nothing in it indicated he was nearer his ambition by a
hair's-breadth than a year before. Yet he refused to pay the price. It
amazed him to find his determination so fixed against betrayal of Will.
He honestly wondered at himself. The decision was bred from a curious
condition of mind quite beyond his power to comprehend. He certainly
recoiled from exposure of Blanchard's secret, yet coldly asked himself
what unsuspected strand of character held him back. It was not fear and
it was not regard for his sweetheart's brother; he did not know what it
was. He scoffed at the ideas of honour or conscience. These abstractions
had possessed weight in earlier years, but not now. And yet, while he
assured himself that no tie of temporal or eternal interest kept him
silent, the temptation to tell seemed much less on this occasion than in
the past when he took a swarm of John Grimbal's bees. Then, indeed, his
mind was aflame with bitter provocation. He affected a cynical attitude
to the position and laughed without mirth at a theory that suddenly
appeared in his mind. Perchance this steadfastness of purpose resulted,
after all, from that artificial thing, "conscience," which men catch at
the impressionable age when they have infantile ailments and pray at a
mother's knee. If so, surely reason must banish such foll