good progress.  He still kept his wrongs sternly before his mind, and when the old bitterness began to grow blunted, deliberately sharpened it again, strangling alike the good work of time and all emotions of rising contentment and returning peace.  Where was the wife whose musical voice and bright eyes should welcome his daily home-coming?  Where were the laughing and pattering-footed little ones?  Of these priceless treasures the man on the Moor had robbed him.  His great house was empty and cheerless.  Thus he could always blow the smouldering fires into active flame by a little musing on the past; but how long it might be possible to sustain his passion for revenge under this artificial stimulation of memory remained to be seen.  As yet, at any rate, the contemplation of Will Blanchard’s ruin was good to Grimbal, and the accident of his discovery that Clement Hicks knew some secret facts to his enemy’s disadvantage served vastly to quicken the lust for a great revenge.  From the first he had determined to drag Clement’s secret out of him sooner or later, and had, until his recent offer of the Red House Farm, practised remarkable patience.  Since then, however, a flicker of apparent prosperity which overtook the bee-keeper appeared to diminish Grimbal’s chances perceptibly; but with the sudden downfall of Clement’s hopes the other’s ends grew nearer again, and at the last it had scarcely surprised him to receive the proposal of Hicks.  So now he stood within an hour or two of the desired knowledge, and his mind was consequently a little abstracted from the matter in hand.

The battery, consisting of four field-guns, was brought into action in the direction of the upper end of the valley, while Major Tremayne, its commanding officer and John Grimbal’s acquaintance, explained to the amateur all that he did not know.  During the previous week the master of the Red House and other officers of the local yeomanry interested in military matters had dined at the mess of those artillery officers then encamped at Okehampton for the annual practice on Dartmoor; and the outcome of that entertainment was an invitation to witness some shooting during the forthcoming week.

The gunners in their dark blue uniforms swarmed busily round four shining sixteen-pounders, while Major Tremayne conversed with his friend.  He was a handsome, large-limbed man, with kindly eyes.

“Where’s your target?” asked Grimbal, as he scanned the deep distance of the valley.

“Away there under that grey mass of rock.  We’ve got to guess at the range as you know; then find it.  I should judge the distance at about two miles—­an extreme limit.  Take my glass and you’ll note a line of earthworks thrown up on this side of the stone.  That is intended to represent a redoubt and we’re going to shell it and slay the dummy men posted inside.”

“I can see without the glass.  The rock is called Oke Tor, and I’m going to meet a man there this afternoon.”