“Leave the rest to me, Faither.”

A fortnight later the cautious miller, after great and exhaustive reflection, set out to carry into practice his intention.  An appointment was made on the day that Will drove to Moreton to meet his sister and Martin Grimbal.  This removed him out of the way, while Billy had been despatched to Okehampton for some harness, and Mr. Lyddon’s daughter, alone in the secret, was spending the afternoon with her mother-in-law.

So Miller walked over to the Red House and soon found himself waiting for John Grimbal in a cheerless but handsome dining-room.  The apartment suggested little occupation.  A desk stood in the window, and upon it were half a dozen documents under a paper-weight made from a horse’s hoof.  A fire burned in the broad grate; a row of chairs, upholstered in dark red leather, stood stiffly round; a dozen indifferent oil-paintings of dogs and horses filled large gold frames upon the walls; and upon a massive sideboard of black oak a few silver cups, won by Grimbal’s dogs at various shows and coursing meetings, were displayed.

Mr. Lyddon found himself kept waiting about ten minutes; then John entered, bade him a cold “good afternoon” without shaking hands, and placed an easy-chair for him beside the fire.

“Would you object to me lighting my pipe, Jan Grimbal?” asked the miller humbly; and by way of answer the other took a box of matches from his pocket and handed it to the visitor.

“Thank you, thank you; I’m obliged to you.  Let me get a light, then I’ll talk to ’e.”

He puffed for a minute or two, while Grimbal waited in silence for his guest to begin.

“Now, wi’out any beatin’ of the bush or waste of time, I’ll speak.  I be come ’bout Blanchard, as I dare say you guessed.  The news of what he done nine or ten years ago comed to me just a month since.  A month ’t was, or might be three weeks.  Like a bolt from the blue it falled ’pon me an’ that’s a fact.  An’ I heard how you knawed the thing—­you as had such gude cause to hate un wance.”

“‘Once?’”

“Well, no man’s hate can outlive his reason, surely?  I was with ’e, tu, then; but a man what lets himself suffer lifelong trouble from a fule be a fule himself.  Not that Blanchard ’s all fule—­far from it.  He’ve ripened a little of late years—­though slowly as fruit in a wet summer.  Granted he bested you in the past an’ your natural hope an’ prayer was to be upsides wi’ un some day.  Well, that’s all dead an’ buried, ban’t it?  I hated the shadow of un in them days so bad as ever you did; but you gets to see more of the world, an’ the men that walks in it when you ’m moved away from things by the distance of a few years.  Then you find how wan deed bears upon t’ other.  Will done no more than you’d ‘a’ done if the cases was altered.  In fact, you ’m alike at some points, come to think of it.”

“Is that what you’ve walked over here to tell me?”