According to individual temperament this pregnant region attracts and fascinates the human spectator or repels him.  Martin Grimbal loved Dartmoor and, apart from ties of birth and early memories, his natural predilections found thereon full scope and play.  He was familiar with most of those literary productions devoted to the land, and now developed an ambition to add some result of personal observation and research to extant achievements.  He went to work with method and determination, and it was not until respectable accumulations of notes and memoranda already appeared as the result of his labours that the man finally—­almost reluctantly—­reconciled himself to the existence of another and deeper interest in his life than that furnished by the grey granite monuments of the Moor.  Hide it from himself he could no longer, nor yet wholly from others.  As in wild Devon it is difficult at any time to escape from the murmur of waters unseen, so now the steady flood of this disquieting emotion made music at all waking hours in Martin’s archaeologic mind, shattered his most subtle theories unexpectedly, and oftentimes swept the granite clean out of his head on the flood of a golden river.

After three months of this beautiful but disquieting experience, Martin resigned himself to the conclusion that he was in love with Chris Blanchard.  He became very cautious and timid before the discovery.  He feared much and contemplated the future with the utmost distrust.  Doubt racked him; he checked himself from planning courses of conduct built on mad presumptions.  By night, as a sort of debauch, in those hours when man is awake and fancy free, he conceived of a happy future with Chris and little children about him; at morning light, if any shadow of that fair vision returned, he blushed and looked round furtively, as though some thought-reader’s cold eye must be sneering at such presumption.  He despaired of finding neutral ground from which his dry mind could make itself attractive to a girl.  Now and again he told himself that the new emotion must be crushed, in that it began to stand between him and the work he had set himself to do for his county; but during more sanguine moods he challenged this decision and finally, as was proper and right, the flood of the man’s first love drowned menhir and hut-circle fathoms deep, and demanded all his attention at the cost of mental peace.  An additional difficulty appeared in the fact that the Blanchard family were responsible for John Grimbal’s misfortune; and Martin, without confusing the two circumstances, felt that before him really lay the problem of a wife or a brother.  When first he heard of the event that set Chagford tongues wagging so briskly, he rightly judged that John would hold him one of the conspirators; and an engagement to Chris Blanchard must certainly confirm the baffled lover’s suspicions and part the men for ever.  But before those words, as they passed through his brain, Martin Grimbal stopped, as the peasant before a shrine.  “An engagement to Chris Blanchard!” He was too much a man and too deep merged in love to hesitate before the possibility of such unutterable happiness.