hes; then it moved spasmodically,--or he fancied that it moved.

He fooled himself with reiterated assurances that he was glorying in the
discovery; he told himself that he was not made of the human stuff that
can forgive bitter wrongs or forget them until cancelled. He painted in
lurid colours his past griefs; through a ghastly morass of revenge grown
stale, of memories deadened by time, he tried to struggle back to his
original starting-point in vanished years, and feel as he felt when he
flung Will Blanchard over Rushford Bridge.

Once he wished to God the truth had never reached him; then he urged
himself to use it instantly and plague his mind no more. A mental
exhaustion and nausea overtook him. Upon the night of his discovery he
retired to sleep wishing that Blanchard would be as good as his rumoured
word and get out of England. But this thought took a shape of reality in
the tattered medley of dreams, and Grimbal, waking, leapt on to the
floor in frantic fear that his enemy had escaped him.

As yet he knew nothing of Will's good fortune, and when it came to his
ears it unexpectedly failed to reawaken resentment or strengthen his
animosity. For, as he retraced the story of the past years, it was with
him as with a man reading the narrative of another's wrongs. He could
not yet absorb himself anew in the strife; he could not revive the
personal element.

Sometimes he looked at himself in the glass as he shaved; and the sight
of the grey hair thickening on the sides of his head, the spectacle of
the deep lines upon his forehead and the stamp of many a shadowy
crow's-foot about his blue eyes--these indications served more than all
his thoughts to sting him into deeds and to rekindle an active
malignancy.

CHAPTER VII

SMALL TIMOTHY

A year and more than a year passed by, during which time some pure
sunshine brightened the life of Blanchard. Chagford laughed at his
sustained good fortune, declared him to have as many lives as a cat, and
secretly regretted its outspoken criticism of Miller Lyddon before the
event of his generosity. Life at Monks Barton was at least wholly happy
for Will himself. No whisper or rumour of renewed tribulation reached
his ear; early and late he worked, with whole-hearted energy; he
differed from Mr. Blee as seldom as possible; he wearied the miller with
new designs, tremendous enterprises, particulars concerning novel
machinery, and much information relating to nitrates. Ne