“Where is it?  Where is it?  The bag of money?  I won’t—­I can’t—­Where is it, I say?”

“I wish I knawed, lovey.  Dream-gawld, I’m afeared.  You’ve bin lying cold, an’ that do allus breed bad thoughts in sleep.  ’Tis late; I done breakfast an hour ago.  An’ Okehampton day, tu.  Coach’ll be along in twenty minutes.”

He sighed and dragged the clothes over himself.

“You’d best go to-day, mother.  The ride will do you good, and I have plenty to fill my time at home.”

Mrs. Hicks brightened perceptibly before this prospect.  She was a little, faded woman, with a brown face and red-rimmed, weak eyes, washed by many years of sorrow to the palest nondescript colour.  She crept through the world with no ambition but to die out of the poorhouse, no prayer but a petition that the parish might not bury her at the end, no joy save in her son.  Life at best was a dreary business for her, and an occasional trip to Okehampton represented about the only brightness that ever crept into it.  Now she bustled off full of excitement to get the honey, and, having put on a withered bonnet and black shawl, presently stood and waited for the omnibus.

Her son dwelt with his thoughts that day, and for him there was no peace or pleasure.  Full twenty times he determined to visit Newtake at once and have it out with Will; but his infirmity of purpose acted like a drag upon this resolution, and his pride also contributed a force against it.  Once he actually started, and climbed up Middledown to reach the Moor beyond; then he changed his mind again as new fires of enmity swept through it.  His wrongs rankled black and bitter; and, faint under them, he presently turned and went home shivering though the day was hot.

CHAPTER VI

A SWARM OF BEES

Above Chagford rise those lofty outposts of Dartmoor, named respectively Nattadown and Middledown.  The first lies nearer to the village, and upon its side, beneath a fir wood which crowns one spur, spread steep wastes of fern and furze.  This spot was a favourite one with Clement Hicks, and a fortnight after the incidents last related he sat there smoking his pipe, while his eyes roved upon the scene subtended before him.  The hill fell abruptly away, and near the bottom glimmered whitewashed cots along a winding road.  Still lower down extended marshy common land, laced with twinkling watercourses and dotted with geese; while beyond, in many a rise and fall and verdant undulation, the country rolled onwards through Teign valley and upwards towards the Moor.  The expanse seen from this lofty standpoint extended like a mighty map, here revealing a patchwork of multicoloured fields, here exhibiting tracts of wild waste and wood, here beautifully indicating by a misty line, seen across ascending planes of forest, the course of the distant river, here revealing the glitter of remote waters damaskeened with gold.  Little farms and outlying