“Ban’t folly allus, Will; theer ’s auld tried wisdom in some ancient sayings.”

“Well, you guide your road by my light if you want to be happy.  ’T is for you I uses all my thinking brain day an’ night—­for your gude an’ the li’l man’s.”

“I knaw—­I knaw right well ‘t is so, dear Will, an’ I’m sorry I spoke so quick.”

“I’ll forgive ’e before you axes me, sweetheart.  Awnly you must larn to trust me, an’ theer ’s no call for you to fear.  Us must speak out sometimes, an’ I did just now, an’ ’t is odds but some of them chaps, Grimbal included, may have got a penn’orth o’ wisdom from me.”

“So ‘t is, then,” she said, cuddling to him; “an’ you’ll do well to sleep now; an’—­an’ never tell again, Will, you’ve got nobody but your mother while I’m above ground, ‘cause it’s against justice an’ truth an’ very terrible for me to hear.”

“‘T was a thoughtless speech,” admitted Will, “an’ I’m sorry I spake it.  ‘T was a hasty word an’ not to be took serious.”

They slept, while the moon wove wan harmonies of ebony and silver into Newtake.  A wind woke, proclaiming morning, as yet invisible; and when it rustled dead leaves or turned a chimney-cowl, the dog at the gate stirred and growled and grated his chain against the granite cross.

CHAPTER V

WINTER

As Christmas again approached, adverse conditions of weather brought like anxieties to a hundred moormen besides Will Blanchard, but the widespread nature of the trouble by no means diminished his individual concern.  A summer of unusual splendour had passed unblessed away, for the sustained drought represented scanty hay and an aftermath of meagre description.  Cereals were poor, with very little straw, and the heavy rains of November arrived too late to save acres of starved roots on high grounds.  Thus the year became responsible for one prosperous product alone:  rarely was it possible to dry so well those stores gathered from the peat beds.  Huge fires, indeed, glowed upon many a hearth, but the glory of them served only to illumine anxious faces.  A hard winter was threatened, and the succeeding spring already appeared as no vision to welcome, but a hungry spectre to dread.

Then, with the last week of the old year, winter swept westerly on hyperborean winds, and when these were passed a tremendous frost won upon the world.  Day followed day of weak, clear sunshine and low temperature.  The sun, upon his shortest journeys, showed a fiery face as he sulked along the stony ridges of the Moor, and gazed over the ice-chained wilderness, the frozen waters, and the dark mosses that never froze, but lowered black, like wounds on a white skin.  Dartmoor slept insensible under granite and ice; no sheep-bell made music; no flocks wandered at will; only the wind moaned in the dead bells of the heather; only the foxes slunk round cot and farm; only the shaggy ponies