“Yet it ’s money.  What did ‘e get for that butivul fox wi’ the goose in his mouth you painted ’pon Mr. Lamacraft’s sign to Sticklepath?”

“Ten shillings.”

“That’s solid money.”

“It isn’t now.  I bought a book with it—­a book of lies.”

Chris was going to speak, but changed her mind and sighed instead.

“Well, as our affairs be speeding so poorly, we’d best to do some gude deed an’ look after this other coil.  You must let Will knaw what ’s doin’ by letter this very night.  ’T is awnly fair, you being set in trust for him.”

“Strange, these Grimbal brothers,” mused Clement, as the lovers proceeded in the direction of Chagford.  “They come home with everything on God’s earth that men might desire to win happiness, and, by the look of it, each marks his home-coming by falling in love with one he can’t have.”

“Shaws the fairness of things, Clem; how the poor may chance to have what the rich caan’t buy; so all look to stand equal.”

“Fairness, you call it?  The damned, cynical irony of this whole passion-driven puppet-show—­that’s what it shows!  The man who is loved cannot marry the woman he loves lest they both starve; the man who can give a woman half the world is loathed for his pains.  Not that he ’s to be pitied like the pauper, for if you can’t buy love you can buy women, and the wise ones know how to manufacture a very lasting substitute for the real thing.”

“You talk that black and bitter as though you was deep-read in all the wickedness of the world,” said Chris; “yet I knaw no man can say sweeter things than you sometimes.”

“Talk!  It ’s all talk with me—­all snarling and railing and whining at hard facts, like a viper wasting its venom on steel.  I’m sick of myself—­weary of the old, stale round of my thoughts.  Where can I wash and be clean?  Chrissy, for God’s sake, tell me.”

“Put your hope in the Spring,” she said, “an’ be busy for Will.”

In reality, with the approach of Christmas, affairs between Phoebe and the elder Grimbal had reached a point far in advance of that which Clement and Chris were concerned with.  For more than three months, and under a steadily increasing weight of opposition, Miller Lyddon’s daughter fought without shadow of yielding.  Then came a time when the calm but determined iteration of her father’s desires and the sledge-hammer love-making of John Grimbal began to leave an impression.  Even then her love for Will was bright and strong, but her sense of helplessness fretted her nerves and temper, and her sweetheart’s laconic messages, through the medium of another man, were sorry comfort in this hour of tribulation.  With some reason she felt slighted.  Neither considering Will’s peculiarities, nor suspecting that his silence was only, the result of a whim or project, she began to resent it.  Then John Grimbal caught her in a dangerous mood.  Once she wavered, and he had the wisdom to leave her at the moment of victory.