“I’ll shaw you dark hovers, wheer braave feesh be lying yet,” promised Will; and the angler thanked him, foretelling a great friendship.  Yet his eyes rarely roamed from Phoebe, and anon, as all three proceeded, John Grimbal stopped at the gate of Monks Barton and held the girl in conversation awhile.  But first he despatched Will homewards with a message for his mother.  “Let Mrs. Blanchard know we’ll feed at seven o’clock off the best that she can get,” he said; “and tell her not to bother about the liquor.  I’ll see to that myself.”

CHAPTER II

A CLEAR UNDERSTANDING

Monks Barton, or Barton Monachorum, as the farm was called in a Tudor perambulation of Chagford, owed its name to traditions that holy men aforetime dwelt there, performed saintly deeds, and blessed a spring in the adjacent woods, whose waters from that date ever proved a magical medicament for “striking” of sore eyes.  That the lands of the valley had once been in monastic possession was, however, probable enough; and some portions of the old farm did in truth rise upon the ruins of a still more ancient habitation long vanished.  Monks Barton stood, a picturesque agglomeration of buildings, beside the river.  The mill-wheel, fed by a stream taken from the Teign some distance up the valley and here returned again to the parent water, thundered on its solemn round in an eternal twinkling twilight of dripping ferns and green mosses; while hard by the dwelling-house stood and offered small diamond panes and one dormer-window to the south.  Upon its whitewashed face three fruit-trees grew—­a black plum, a cherry, a winter pear; and before the farmhouse stretched a yard sloping to the river ford, where a line of massive stepping-stones for foot-passengers crossed the water.  On either side of this space, walled up from the edge of the stream, little gardens of raspberry and gooseberry bushes spread; and here, too, appeared a few apple-trees, a bed of herbs, a patch of onions, purple cabbages, and a giant hollyhock with sulphur-coloured blossoms that thrust his proud head upwards, a gentleman at large, and the practical countrymen of the kitchen-garden.  The mill and outbuildings, the homestead and wood-stacks embraced a whole gamut of fine colour, ranging from the tawny and crimson of fretted brick and tile to varied greys of drying timber; from the cushions and pillows of moss and embroidery of houseleeks and valerian, that had flourished for fifty years on a ruined shippen, to the silver gleam of old thatches and the shining gold of new.  Nor was the white face of the dwelling-house amiss.  Only one cold, crude eye stared out from this time-tinctured scene; only one raw pentroof of corrugated iron blotted it, made poets sigh, artists swear, and Miller Lyddon contemplate more of the same upon his land.