“Oh, dry up that rot!  Don’t think I’m blind, if you are.  Don’t deceive yourself.  There’s a woman-hunger in you, too, though perhaps you haven’t found it out yet.  What about that Blanchard girl?”

Martin flushed like a schoolboy; his hand went up over his mouth and chin as though to hide part of his guilt, and he looked alarmed and uneasy.

John laughed without mirth at the other’s ludicrous trepidation.

“Good heavens!  I’ve done nothing surely to suggest—?”

“Nothing at all—­except look as if you were going to have a fit every time you get within a mile of her.  Lovers know the signs, I suppose.  Don’t pretend you’re made of different stuff to the rest of us, that’s all.”

Martin removed his hand and gasped before the spectacle of what he had revealed to other eyes.  Then, after a silence of fifteen seconds, he shut his mouth again, wiped his forehead with his hand, and spoke.

“I’ve been a silly fool.  Only she’s so wonderfully beautiful—­don’t you think so?”

“A gypsy all over—­if you call that beautiful.”

The other flushed up again, but made no retort.

“Never mind me or anybody else.  I want to speak to you about Phoebe, if I may, John.  Who have I got to care about but you?  I’m only thinking of your happiness, for that’s dearer to me than my own; and you know in your heart that I’m speaking the truth when I say so.”

“Stick to your gate-posts and old walls and cow-comforts and dead stones.  We all know you can look farther into Dartmoor granite than most men, if that’s anything; but human beings are beyond you and always were.  You’d have come home a pauper but for me.”

“D’ you think I’m not grateful?  No man ever had a better brother than you, and you’ve stood between me and trouble a thousand times.  Now I want to stand between you and trouble.”

“What the deuce d’ you mean by naming Phoebe, then?”

“That is the trouble.  Listen and don’t shout me down.  She’s breaking her heart—­blind or not blind, I see that—­breaking her heart, not for you, but Will Blanchard.  Nobody else has found it out; but I have, and I know it’s my duty to tell you; and I’ve done it.”

An ugly twist came into John Grimbal’s face.  “You’ve done it; yes.  Go on.”

“That’s all, brother, and from your manner I don’t believe it’s entirely news to you.”

“Then get you gone, damned snake in the grass!  Get gone, ’fore I lay a hand on you!  You to turn and bite me! Me, that’s made you!  I see it all—­your blasted sheep’s eyes at Chris Blanchard, and her always at Monks Barton!  Don’t lie about it,” he roared, as Martin raised his hand to speak; “not a word more will I hear from your traitor’s lips.  Get out of my sight, you sneaking hypocrite, and never call me ‘brother’ no more, for I’ll not own to it!”

“You’ll be sorry for this, John.”

“And you too.  You’ll smart all your life long when you think of this dirty trick played against a brother who never did you no hurt.  You to come between me and the girl that’s promised to marry me!  And for your own ends.  A manly, brotherly plot, by God!”