Though the wanderer presently slept peacefully enough, there was little more repose that night for her brother or his wife.  Phoebe herself became much affected by the tremendous news.  Then they talked into the early dawn before any promising mode of presenting Chris to her mother occurred to them.  At breakfast Will followed a suggestion of Phoebe’s, and sensibly lessened the shock of his announcement.

“A ‘mazin’ wonnerful dream I had last night,” he began abruptly.  “I thought I was roused long arter midnight by a gert knocking, an’ I went down house an’ found a woman at the door.  ‘Who be you?’ I sez.  ’Why, I be Chris, brother Will,’ she speaks back, ’Chris, come home-along to mother an’ you.’  Then I seed it was her sure enough, an’ she telled me all about herself, an’ how she’d dwelt wi’ gypsy people.  Natural as life it weer, I assure ’e.”

This parable moved Mrs. Blanchard more strongly than Will expected.  She dropped her piece of bread and dripping, grew pale, and regarded her son with frightened eyes.  Then she spoke.

“Tell me true, Will; don’t ’e play with a mother ’bout a life-an’-death thing like her cheel.  I heard voices in the night, an’ thought ’t was a dream—­but—­oh, bwoy, not Chris, not our awn Chris!—­’t would ’most kill me for pure joy, I reckon.”

“Listen to me, mother, an’ eat your food.  Us won’t have no waste here, as you knaw very well.  I haven’t tawld ’e the end of the story.  Chris, ‘pearin’ to be back again, I thinks, ’this will give mother palpitations, though ’t is quite a usual thing for a darter to come back to her mother,’ so I takes her away to the linhay for the night an’ locks her in; an’ if ‘t was true, she might be theer now, an’ if it weer n’t—­”

Damaris rose, and held the table as she did so, for her knees were weak under her.

“I be strong—­strong to meet my awn darter.  Gimme the key, quick—­the key, Will—­do ’e hear me, child?”

“I’ll come along with ’e.”

“No, I say.  What!  Ban’t I a young woman still?  ’T was awnly essterday Chris corned in the world.  You just bide with Phoebe, an’ do what I tell ’e.”

Will handed over the key at this order, and Mrs. Blanchard, grasping it without a word, passed unsteadily across the farmyard.  She fumbled at the lock, and dropped the key once, but picked it up quickly before Will could reach her, then she unfastened the door and entered.

CHAPTER II

HOPE RENEWED

Jon Grimbal’s desires toward Blanchard lay dormant, and the usual interests of life filled his mind.  The attitude he now assumed was one of sustained patience and observation; and it may best be described in words of his own employment.

Visiting Drewsteignton, about a month after the return of Chris Blanchard to her own, the man determined to extend his ride and return by devious ways.  He passed, therefore, where the unique Devonian cromlech stands hard by Bradmere pool.  A lane separates this granite antiquity from the lake below, and as John Grimbal rode between them, his head high enough to look over the hedge, he observed a ladder raised against the Spinsters’ Rock, as the cromlech is called, and a man with a tape-measure sitting on the cover stone.