On an evening in late May she became seriously alarmed for his reason.  Circumstances suddenly combined to strangle the last flickering breath of patience in Will, and the slender barriers were swept away in such a storm as even Phoebe’s wide experience of him had never parallelled.  Miller Lyddon was out, at a meeting in the village convened to determine after what fashion Chagford should celebrate the Sovereign’s Jubilee; Billy also departed about private concerns, and Will and his wife had Monks Barton much to themselves.  Even she irritated the suffering man at this season, and her sunken face and chatter about her own condition and future hopes of a son often worried him into sheer frenzy.  His promise once exacted she rarely touched upon that matter, believing the less said the better, but he misunderstood her reticence and held it selfish.  Indeed, Blanchard fretted and chafed alone now; for John Grimbal’s sustained silence had long ago convinced Mr. Lyddon that the master of the Red House meant no active harm, and Phoebe readily grasped at the same conclusion.

This night, however, the flood-gates crumbled, and Will, before a futile assertion from Phoebe touching the happy promise of the time to come and the cheerful spring weather, dashed down his pipe with an oath, clenched his hands, then leapt to his feet, shook his head, and strode about like a maniac.

“Will!  You’ve brawk un to shivers—­the butivul wood pipe wi’ amber that I gived ’e last birthday!”

“Damn my birthday—­a wisht day for me ’t was!  I’ve lived tu long—­tu long by all my years, an’ nobody cares wan salt tear that I be roastin’ in hell-fire afore my time.  I caan’t stand it no more—­no more at all—­not for you or your faither or angels in heaven or ten million babies to be born into this blasted world—­not if I was faither to ’em all.  I must live my life free, or else I’ll go in a madhouse.  Free—­do ’e hear me?  I’ve suffered enough and waited more ’n enough.  Ban’t months nor weeks neither—­’t is a long, long lifetime.  You talk o’ time dragging!  If you knawed—­if you knawed!  An’ these devil-spinners allus knotting an’ twisting.  I could do things—­I could—­things man never dreamed.  An’ I will—­for they ‘m grawing and grawing, an’ they’ll burst my skull if I let ’em bide in it.  Months ago I’ve sat on a fence unbeknawnst wheer men was shooting, an’ whistled for death.  So help me, ’t is true.  Me to do that!  Theer ’s a cur for ‘e; an’ yet ban’t me neither, but the spinners in my head.  Death ’s a party easily called, mind you.  A knife, or a pinch o’ powder, or a drop o’ deep water—­they ’ll bring un to your elbow in a moment.  Awnly, if I done that, I’d go in company.  Nobody should bide to laugh.  Them as would cry might cry, but him as would laugh should come along o’ me—­he should, by God!”

“Will, Will!  It isn’t my Will talking so?”

“It be me, an’ it ban’t me.  But I’m in earnest at last, an’ speakin’ truth.  The spinners knaw, an’ they ‘m right.  I’m sick to sheer hate o’ my life; and you’ve helped to make me so—­you and your faither likewise.  This thing doan’t tear your heart out of you an’ grind your nerves to pulp as it should do if you was a true wife.”