Phoebe was slightly interested.  She promised to do anything in her power that might cause Mr. Grimbal satisfaction; and he, very wisely, assured her that there was no salve for sorrow like unselfish labours on behalf of other people.  He left her at the farm-gate, and tramped back to the Blanchard cottage with his mind busy enough.  Presently he changed his clothes, and set a diamond in his necktie.  Then he strolled away into the village, to see the well-remembered names above the little shop windows; to note curiously how Chagford market-place had shrunk and the houses dwindled since last he saw them; to call with hearty voice and rough greeting at this habitation and that; to introduce himself again among men and women who had known him of yore, and who, for the most part, quite failed to recognise in their bluff and burly visitor the lad who set forth from his father’s cottage by the church so many years before.

CHAPTER V

THE INCIDENT OF MR. JOEL FORD

Of Blanchard family history a little more must be said.  Timothy Blanchard, the husband of Damaris and father of Will and Chris, was in truth of the nomads, though not a right gypsy.  As a lad, and at a time when the Romany folk enjoyed somewhat more importance and prosperity than of late years, he joined them, and by sheer force of character and mother wit succeeded in rising to power amongst the wanderers.  The community with which he was connected for the most part confined its peregrinations to the West; and time saw Timothy Blanchard achieve success in his native country, acquire two caravans, develop trade on a regular “circuit,” and steadily save money in a small way; while his camp of some five-and-twenty souls—­men, women, and numerous children—­shared in their leader’s prosperity.  These earlier stages of the man’s career embraced some strange circumstances, chief amongst them being his marriage.  Damaris Ford was the daughter of a Moor farmer.  Her girlhood had been spent in the dreary little homestead of “Newtake,” above Chagford, within the fringe of the great primeval wastes; and here, on his repeated journeys across the Moor, Tim Blanchard came to know her and love her well.

Farmer Ford swore round oaths, and sent Blanchard and his caravans packing when the man approached him for his daughter’s hand; but the girl herself was already won, and week after her lover’s repulse Damaris vanished.  She journeyed with her future husband to Exeter, wedded him, and became mistress of his house on wheels; then, for the space of four years, she lived the gypsy life, brought a son and daughter into the world, and tried without avail to obtain her father’s forgiveness.  That, however, she never had, though her mother communicated with her in fear and trembling; and when, by strange chance, on Will’s advent, Damaris Blanchard was brought to bed near her old home, and became a mother in one of the venerable hut circles which plentifully scatter that lonely region, Mrs. Ford, apprised of the fact in secret, actually stole to her daughter’s side by night and wept over her grandchild.  Now the farmer and his wife were dead; Newtake at present stood without a tenant; and Mrs. Blanchard possessed no near relations save her children and one elder brother, Joel, to whom had passed their parent’s small savings.