A man in this receptive mood is not asked as a rule to wait long for the needful response; but Brendon was old-fashioned and the women born of the war attracted him not at all.  He recognized their fine qualities and often their distinction of mind; yet his ideal struck backward to another and earlier type—­the type of his own mother who, as a widow, had kept house for him until her death.  She was his feminine ideal—­restful, sympathetic, trustworthy—­one who always made his interests hers, one who concentrated upon his life rather than her own and found in his progress and triumphs the salt of her own existence.

Mark wanted, in truth, somebody who would be content to merge herself in him and seek neither to impress her own personality upon his, nor develop an independent environment.  He had wit to know a mother’s standpoint must be vastly different from that of any wife, no matter how perfect her devotion; he had experience enough of married men to doubt whether the woman he sought was to be found in a post-war world; yet he preserved and permitted himself a hope that the old-fashioned women still existed, and he began to consider where he might find such a helpmate.

He was somewhat overweary after a strenuous year; but to Dartmoor he always came for health and rest when opportunity offered, and now he had returned for the third time to the Duchy Hotel at Princetown—­there to renew old friendships and amuse himself on the surrounding trout streams through the long days of June and July.

Brendon enjoyed the interest he awakened among other fishermen and, though he always went upon his expeditions alone, usually joined the throng in the smoking-room after dinner.  Being a good talker he never failed of an audience there.  But better still he liked an hour sometimes with the prison warders.  For the convict prison that dominated that grey smudge in the heart of the moors known as Princetown held many interesting and famous criminals, more than one of whom had been “put through” by him, and had to thank Brendon’s personal industry and daring for penal servitude.  Upon the prison staff were not a few men of intelligence and wide experience who could tell the detective much germane to his work.  The psychology of crime never paled in its intense attraction for Brendon and many a strange incident, or obscure convict speech, related without comment to him by those who had witnessed, or heard them, was capable of explanation in the visitor’s mind.

He had found an unknown spot where some good trout dwelt and on an evening in mid-June he set forth to tempt them.  He had discovered certain deep pools in a disused quarry fed by a streamlet, that harboured a fish or two heavier than most of those surrendered daily by the Dart and Meavy, the Blackabrook and the Walkham.

Foggintor Quarry, wherein lay these preserves, might be approached in two ways.  Originally broken into the granite bosom of the moor for stone to build the bygone war prison of Princetown, a road still extended to the deserted spot and joined the main throughfare half a mile distant.  A house or two—­dwellings used by old-time quarrymen—­stood upon this grass-grown track; but the huge pit was long ago deserted.  Nature had made it beautiful, although the wonderful place was seldom appreciated now and only wild creatures dwelt therein.