of the horizon lifted and light generally increased, though every outline of the hills themselves vanished under falling rain.  The turmoil of the clouds proceeded, and after another squall had passed there followed an aerial battle amid towers and pinnacles and tottering precipices of sheer gloom.  The centre of illumination wheeled swiftly round to the sun as the storm travelled north, then a few huge silver spokes of wan sunshine turned irregularly upon the stone-strewn desert.

Will watched this elemental unrest, and it served to soothe that greater storm of sorrows and self-condemnation then raging within him.  His nature found consolation here, the cool hand of the Mother touched his forehead as she passed in her robe of rain, and for the first time since childhood the man hid his face and wept.

Presently he moved forward again, walked to the valleys and wandered towards southern Teign, unconsciously calmed by his own random movements and the river’s song.  Anon, he entered the lands of Metherill, and soon afterwards, without deliberate intention, moved through that Damnonian village which lies there.  A moment later and he stood in the hut-circle where he himself had been born.  Its double stone courses spread around him, hiding the burrows of the rabbits; and sprung from between two granite blocks, brave in spring verdure, with the rain twinkling in little nests of flower buds as yet invisible, there rose a hawthorn.  Within the stones a ewe stood and suckled its young, but there was no other sign of life.  Then Blanchard, sitting here to rest and turning his eyes whither he had come, again noticed some sudden movement, but, looking intently at the spot, he saw nothing and returned to his own thoughts.  Sitting motionless Will retraced the brief course of his career through long hours of thought; and though his spirit bubbled to white heat more than once during the survey, yet subdued currents of sense wound amid his later reflections.  Crushed for a moment under the heavy load of life and its lessons, he presented a picture familiar enough, desirable enough, necessary enough to all humanity, yet pathetic as exemplified in the young and unintelligent and hopeful.  It was the picture of the dawn of patience—­a patience sprung from no religious inspiration, but representing Will’s tacit acknowledgment of defeat in his earlier battles with the world.  The emotion did not banish his present rebellion against Fate and evil fortune undeserved; but it caused him to look upon life from a man’s standpoint rather than a child’s, and did him a priceless service by shaking to their foundations his self-confidence and self-esteem.  Selfish at least he was not from a masculine standard, and now his thoughts returned to Phoebe in her misery, and he rose and retraced his steps with a purpose to comfort her if he could.

The day began to draw in.  Unshed rains massed on the high tors, but towards the west one great band of primrose sky rolled out above the vanished sun and lighted a million little amber lamps in the hanging crystals of the rain.  They twinkled on thorns and briars, on the grass, the silver crosiers of uncurling ferns, and all the rusty-red young heather.