ucceeded in rising to power amongst the wanderers. The
community with which he was connected for the most part confined its
peregrinations to the West; and time saw Timothy Blanchard achieve
success in his native country, acquire two caravans, develop trade on a
regular "circuit," and steadily save money in a small way; while his
camp of some five-and-twenty souls--men, women, and numerous
children--shared in their leader's prosperity. These earlier stages of
the man's career embraced some strange circumstances, chief amongst them
being his marriage. Damaris Ford was the daughter of a Moor farmer. Her
girlhood had been spent in the dreary little homestead of "Newtake,"
above Chagford, within the fringe of the great primeval wastes; and
here, on his repeated journeys across the Moor, Tim Blanchard came to
know her and love her well.

Farmer Ford swore round oaths, and sent Blanchard and his caravans
packing when the man approached him for his daughter's hand; but the
girl herself was already won, and week after her lover's repulse Damaris
vanished. She journeyed with her future husband to Exeter, wedded him,
and became mistress of his house on wheels; then, for the space of four
years, she lived the gypsy life, brought a son and daughter into the
world, and tried without avail to obtain her father's forgiveness. That,
however, she never had, though her mother communicated with her in fear
and trembling; and when, by strange chance, on Will's advent, Damaris
Blanchard was brought to bed near her old home, and became a mother in
one of the venerable hut circles which plentifully scatter that lonely
region, Mrs. Ford, apprised of the fact in secret, actually stole to her
daughter's side by night and wept over her grandchild. Now the farmer
and his wife were dead; Newtake at present stood without a tenant; and
Mrs. Blanchard possessed no near relations save her children and one
elder brother, Joel, to whom had passed their parent's small savings.

Timothy Blanchard continued a wandering existence for the space of five
years after his marriage; then he sold his caravans, settled in
Chagford, bought the cottage by the river, rented some market-garden
land, and pursued his busy and industrious way. Thus he prospered
through ten more years, saving money, developing a variety of schemes,
letting out on hire a steam thresher, and in various other ways adding
to his store. The man was on the high road to genuine prosperity when
de