“Don’t talk like that, dear old chap.  You’re not the man you pretend to be, and pretend to think yourself.  Don’t sour your nature so.  Let the past lie and go into the world and end this lonely existence.”

“Why don’t you?”

“The circumstances are different.  I am not a man for a wife.  You are, if ever there was one.”

“I had him within a hair’s-breadth once,” resumed the other inconsequently.  “Blanchard, I mean.  There ’s a secret against him.  You didn’t know that, but there is.  Some black devilry for all I can tell.  But I missed it.  Perhaps if I knew it would quicken up my spirit and remind me of all the brute made me endure.”

“Yet you say the old feeling is dead!”

“So it is—­starved.  Hicks knew.  He broke his neck an hour too soon.  It was like a dream of a magnificent banquet I had some time ago.  I woke with my mouth watering, just as the food was uncovered, and I felt so damned savage at being done out of the grub that I got up and went down-stairs and had half a pint of champagne and half a cold roast partridge!  I watch Blanchard go down the hill—­that’s all.  If this knowledge had come to me when I was boiling, I should have used it to his utmost harm, of course.  Now I sometimes doubt, even if I could hang the man, whether I should take the trouble to do it.”

“Get away from him and all thought of him.”

“I do.  He never crosses my mind unless he crosses my eyes.  I ride past Newtake occasionally, and see him sweating and slaving and fighting the Moor.  Then I laugh, as you laugh at a child building sand castles against an oncoming tide.  Poor fool!”

“If you pity, you might find it in your heart to forgive.”

“My attitude is assured.  We will call it one of mere indifference.  You made up that row over the gate-post when his first child died, didn’t you?”

“Yes, yes.  We shall be friendly—­we must be, if only for the sake of the memory of Chris. You and I are frank to-day.  But you saw long ago what I tried to hide, so it is no news to you.  You will understand.  When Hicks died I thought perhaps after years—­but that’s over now.  She ’s gone.”

“Didn’t you know?  She ’s back again.”

“Back!  Good God!”

John laughed at his brother’s profound agitation.

“Like as not you’d see her if you went over Rushford Bridge.  She ’s back with her mother.  Queer devils, all of them; but I suppose you can have her for the asking now if you couldn’t before.  Damnably like her brother she is.  She passed me two days ago, and looked at me as if I was transparent, or a mere shadow hiding something else.”

A rush of feeling overwhelmed Martin before this tremendous news.  He could not trust himself to speak.  Then a great hope wrestled with him and conquered.  In his own exaltation he desired to see all whom he loved equally lifted up towards happiness.

“I wish to Heaven you would open your eyes and raise them from your dogs and find a wife, John.”