“To shaw ’e, neighbours, just the man he is, I may tell ’e that a larned piece like Martin Grimbal ackshually comed all the way to Newtake not long since to ax advice of un.  An’ ’twas on the identical matter of this same Hicks.  Mr. Grimbal wanted to give un some work to do, ’bout a book or some such item; an’ Will he ups and sez, ‘Doan’t,’ just short an’ straight like that theer.  ‘Doan’t,’ he sez.  ’Let un shaw what’s in un first’; an’ t’other nodded when he said it.”

Having now attested his regard for the master of Newtake, Sam jogged off.  He was pleased with himself, proud of having silenced more than one detractor, and as his little brain turned the matter over, his lips parted in a grin.

Coomstock meanwhile had limped into the cottage where Clement lived with his mother.  He did not garble his news, for it needed no artistic touch; and, with nice sense of his perfect and effective instrument, he realised the weapon was amply sharp enough without whetting, and employed the story as it came into his hand.  But Mr. Coomstock was a little surprised and disappointed at his cousin’s reserve and self-restraint.  He had hoped for a hearty outburst of wrath and the assurance of wide-spreading animosity, yet no such thing happened, and the talebearer presently departed in some surprise.  Mrs. Hicks, indeed, had shrilled forth a torrent of indignation upon the sole subject equal to raising such an emotion in her breast, for Clem was her only son.  The man, however, took it calmly, or appeared to do so; and even when Charles Coomstock was gone he refused to discuss the matter more.

But had his cousin, with Asmodeus-flight, beheld Clement during the subsequent hours which he spent alone, it is possible that the wheelwright had felt amply repaid for his trouble.  Not until dawn stole grey along the village street; not until sparrows in the thatch above him began their salutation to the morning; not until Chagford rookery had sent forth a harmonious multitude to the hills and valleys did Clement’s aching eyes find sleep.  For hours he tossed and turned, now trembling with rage, now prompted by some golden thread in the tangled mazes of his mind to discredit the thing reported.  Blanchard, as it seemed, had come deliberately and maliciously between him and an opportunity to win work.  He burnt to know what he should do; and, like a flame of forked light against the sombre background of his passion, came the thought of another who hated Blanchard too.  Will’s secret glowed and gleamed like the writing on the wall; looking out, Hicks saw it stamped on the dark earth and across the starry night; and he wished to God that the letters might so remain to be read by the world when it wakened.  Finally he slept and dreamed that he had been to the Red House, that he had spoken to John Grimbal, and returned home again with a bag of gold.

When his mother came to call him he was lying half uncovered in a wild confusion of scattered bed-clothes; and his arms and body were jerking as a dog’s that dreams.  She saw a sort of convulsion pinch and pucker his face; then he made some inarticulate sounds—­as it were a frantic negation; and then the noise of his own cry awakened him.  He looked wildly round and lifted his hands as though he expected to find them full.