issue and aroused long-stagnant emotions from their troubled slumbers.  He discovered that a frank hatred of Will Blanchard awoke and lived.  He told himself this man was to blame for all, and not content with poisoning his life, now ravaged his soul also and blighted every outlook of his being.  Like a speck upon an eyeball, which blots the survey of the whole eye, so this wretch had fastened upon him, ruined his ambitions, wrecked his life, and now dragged his honour and his very manhood into the dust.  John Grimbal found himself near choked by a raging fit of passion at last.  He burnt into sheer frenzy against Blanchard; and the fuel of the fire was the consciousness of his own craven performance of that morning.  Flying from self-contemplation, he sought distraction and even oblivion at any source where his mind could win it; and now he laid all blame on his enemy and suffered the passion of his own shame and remorse to rise, as it had been a red mist, against this man who was playing havoc with his body and soul.  He trembled under the loneliness of the woods in a debauch of mere brute rage that exhausted him and left a mark on the rest of his life.  Even his present powers appeared trifling and their exercise a deed unsatisfying before this frenzy.  What happiness could be achieved by flinging Blanchard into prison for a few months at most?  What salve could be won from thought of this man’s disgrace and social ruin?  The spectacle sank into pettiness now.  His blood was surging through his veins and crying for action.  Primitive passion gripped him and craved primitive outlet.  At that hour, in his own deepest degradation, the man came near madness, and every savage voice in him shouted for blood and blows and batterings in the flesh.

Phoebe Blauchard hastened home, meanwhile, and kept her own counsel upon the subject of the dawn’s sensational incidents.  Her first instinct was to tell her husband everything at the earliest opportunity, but Will had departed to his work before she reached the farm, and on second thoughts she hesitated to speak or give John Grimbal’s message.  She feared to precipitate the inevitable.  In her own heart what mystery revolved about Will’s past performances undoubtedly embraced the child fashioned in his likeness; and though she had long fought against the rumour and deceived herself by pretending to believe Chris, whose opinion differed from that of most people, yet at her heart she felt truth must lie hidden somewhere in the tangle.  Will and Mr. Lyddon alone knew nothing of the report, and Phoebe hesitated to break it to her husband.  He was happy—­perhaps in the consciousness that nobody realised the truth; and yet at his very gates a bitter foe guessed at part of his secret and knew the rest.  Still Phoebe could not bring herself to speak immediately.  A day of mental stress and strain ended, and she retired and lay beside Will very sad.  Under darkness of night the threats of the enemy grew into an imminent disaster of terrific dimensions, and with haunting fear she finally slept, to waken in a nightmare.