“Then there’s the gypsy blood in him—­” declared Mr. Lyddon, “that might send him roaming oversea, if nothing else did.”

“Or my great doings are like to have fired him,” said John.  “How’s Phoebe?” he continued, dismissing Will.  “I saw her yesterday—­a bowerly maiden she’s grown—­a prize for a better man that this wild youngster, now bolted God knaws where.”

“So I think,” agreed the miller, “an’ I hope she’ll soon forget the searching grey eyes of un and his high-handed way o’ speech.  Gals like such things.  Dear, dear! though he made me so darned angry last night, I could have laughed in his faace more ’n wance.”

“Missy’s under the weather this marnin’,” declared Billy.  “Who tawld her I ban’t able to say, but she knawed he’d gone just arter feedin’ the fowls, and she went down valley alone, so slow, wi’ her purty head that bent it looked as if her sunbonnet might be hiding an auld gran’mother’s poll.”

“She’ll come round,” said Martin; “she’s only a young girl yet.”

“And there ’s fish as good in the sea as ever came out, and better,” declared his brother.  “She must wait for a man who is a man,—­somebody of good sense and good standing, with property to his name.”

Miller Lyddon noted with surprise and satisfaction John Grimbal’s warmth of manner upon this question; he observed also the stout, hearty body of him, and the handsome face that crowned it.  Then the brothers proceeded down-stream, and the master of Monks Barton looked after them and caught himself hoping that they might meet Phoebe.

At a point where the river runs between a giant shoulder of heather-clad hill on one side and the ragged expanses of Whiddon Park upon the other, John clambered down to the streamside and began to fish, while Martin dawdled at hand and watched the sport.  A pearly clearness, caught from the clouds, characterised earth as well as air, and proved that every world-picture depends for atmosphere and colour upon the sky-picture extended above it.  Again there was movement and some music, for the magic of the wind in a landscape’s nearer planes is responsible for both.  The wooded valley lay under a grey and breezy forenoon; swaying alders marked each intermittent gust with a silver ripple of upturned foliage, and still reaches of the river similarly answered the wind with hurrying flickers and furrows of dimpled light.  Through its transparent flood, where the waters ran in shadow and escaped reflections, the river revealed a bed of ruddy brown and rich amber.  This harmonious colouring proceeded from the pebbly bottom, where a medley of warm agate tones spread and shimmered, like some far-reaching mosaic beneath the crystal.  Above Teign’s shrunken current extended oak and ash, while her banks bore splendid concourse of the wild water-loving dwellers in that happy valley.  Meadowsweet nodded creamy crests; hemlock and fool’s parsley and seeding willow-herb crowded together beneath far-scattered filigree of