His lonely death was on this wise.  Standing at the edge of the highest point of Oke Tor, with his back to the distant guns, he had crowned the artillerymen’s target, himself invisible.  At that moment firing began, and the first shell, suddenly shrieking scarcely twenty yards above his head, had caused Hicks to start and turn abruptly.  With this action he lost his balance; then a projection of the granite struck his back as he fell and brought him heavily to the earth upon his head.

Now the sun, creeping westerly, already threw a ruddiness over the Moor, and this warm light touching the dead man’s cheek brought thither a hue never visible in life, and imparted to the features a placidity very startling by contrast with the circumstances of his sudden and violent end.

CHAPTER XVI

BEFORE THE DAWN

It proclaims the attitude of John Grimbal to his enemy that thus suddenly confronted with the corpse of a man whom he believed in life, his first emotion should have betokened bitter disappointment and even anger.  Will Blanchard’s secret, great or small, was safe enough for the present; and the hand stretched eagerly for revenge clutched air.

Convincing himself that Hicks was dead, Grimbal galloped off towards Belstone village, the nearest centre of civilisation.  There he reported the facts, directed police and labourers where to find the body and where to carry it, and subsequently rode swiftly back to Chagford.  Arrived at the market-place, he acquainted Abraham Chown, the representative of the Devon constabulary, with his news, and finally writing a brief statement at the police station before leaving it, Grimbal returned home.

Not until after dark was the impatient mother made aware of her son’s end, and she had scarcely received the intelligence before he came home to her—­with no triumphant news of the Red House Farm, but dead, on a sheep-hurdle.  Like summer lightning Clement’s fate leapt through the length and breadth of Chagford.  It penetrated to the vicarage; it reached outlying farms; it arrived at Monks Barton, was whispered near Mrs. Blanchard’s cottage by the Teign, and, in the early morning of the following day, reached Newtake.

Then Will, galloping to the village while dawn was yet grey, met Doctor Parsons, and heard the truth of these uncertain rumours which had reached him.

“It seems clear enough when Grimbal’s statement comes to be read,” explained the medical man.  “He had arranged a meeting with poor Hicks on Oke Tor, and, when he went to keep his appointment, found the unfortunate man lying under the rocks quite dead.  The spot, I must tell you, was near a target of the soldiers at Okehampton, and John Grimbal first suspected that Hicks, heedless of the red warning flags, had wandered into the line of fire and been actually slain by a projectile.  But nothing of that sort happened.  I have seen him.  The unfortunate man evidently slipped and fell from some considerable height upon his head.  His neck is dislocated and the base of the skull badly fractured.”