“Cooshey, cooshey won’t hurt ’e, my li’l bud!” cried Phoebe, as Ship jumped and barked at the lumbering beast.  Then the child doubled round a dung-heap and fled to his father’s arms.  From the byre a cow with a full udder softly lowed, and now small Will had a cup of warm milk; then, with his red mouth like a rosebud in mist and his father’s smile magically and laughably reproduced upon his little face, he trotted back to his mother.

A moment later Will, still milking, heard himself loudly called from the gate.  The voice he knew well enough, but it was pitched unusually high, and denoted a condition of excitement and impatience very seldom to be met with in its possessor.  Martin Grimbal, for it was he, did not observe Blanchard, as the farmer emerged from the byre.  His eye was bent in startled and critical scrutiny of a granite post, to which the front gate of Newtake latched, and he continued shouting aloud until Will stood beside him.  Then he appeared on his hands and knees beside the gate-post.  He had flung down his stick and satchel; his mouth was slightly open; his cap rested on the side of his head; his face seemed transfigured before some overwhelming discovery.

Relations were still strained between these men; and Will did not forget the fact, though it had evidently escaped Martin in his present excitement.

“What the deuce be doin’ now?” asked Blanchard abruptly.

“Man alive!  A marvel!  Look here—­to think I have passed this stone a hundred times and never noticed!”

He rose, brushed his muddy knees, still gazing at the gate-post, then took a trowel from his bag and began to cut away the turf about the base of it.

“Let that bide!” called out the master sharply.  “What be ’bout, delving theer?”

“I forgot you didn’t know.  I was coming to see you on my way to the Moor.  I wanted a drink and a handshake.  We mustn’t be enemies, and I’m heartily sorry for what I said—­heartily.  But here’s a fitting object to build new friendship on.  I just caught sight of the incisions through a fortunate gleam of early morning light.  Come this side and see for yourself.  To think you had what a moorman would reckon good fortune at your gate and never guessed it!”

“Fortune at my gate?  Wheer to?  I aint heard nothin’ of it.”

“Here, man, here!  D’ you see this post?”

“Not bein’ blind, I do.”

“Yet you were blind, and so was I. There ’s excuse for you—­none for me.  It’s a cross!  Yes, a priceless old Christian cross, buried here head downward by some profane soul in the distant past, who found it of size and shape to make a gate-post.  They are common enough in Cornwall, but very rare in Devon.  It’s a great—­a remarkable discovery in fact, and I’m right glad I found it on your threshold; for we may be friends again beside this symbol fittingly enough—­eh, Will?”

“Bother your rot,” answered the other coldly, and quite unimpassioned before Martin’s eloquence.  “You doubted my judgment not long since and said hard things and bad things; now I take leave to doubt yours.  How do ’e knaw this here ‘s a cross any more than t’ other post the gate hangs on?”