“He knawed I was at low ebb an’ not able to pick an’ choose.  So he gives me a starvin’ man’s job.  If I’d been in easy circumstances an’ able to say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ at choice, I’d never have blamed un.”

“Nonsense and stuff!” declared Mr. Chapple.  “Theer’s not a shadow of shame in it.”

“You’m Miller’s friend, of coourse,” said Will.

“’Tis so plain as a pike, I think!” squeaked a hare-lipped young man of weak intellect who was also present.  “Blanchard be right for sartain.”

“Theer!  If soft Gurney sees my drift it must be pretty plain,” said Will, in triumph.

“But as ’tis awnly him that does, lad,” commented Mr. Chapple, drily, “caan’t say you’ve got any call to be better pleased.  Go you back an’ do the job, like a wise man.”

“I’d clear the peat out o’ Cranmere Pool sooner!” said Will.

And he turned homewards again, wretched enough, yet fiercely prodding his temper when it flagged, and telling himself repeatedly that he had acted as became a man of spirit and of judgment.  Then, upon a day sufficiently leaden and dreary until that moment, burst forth sudden splendours, and Will’s life, from a standpoint of extreme sobriety in time, instantly passed to rare brightness.  Between the spot on the highway where Chris met him and his arrival at home, the youth enjoyed half a lifetime of glorious hopes and ambitions; but a cloud indeed shadowed all this overwhelming joy in that the event responsible for his change of fortune was itself sad.

While yet twenty yards from her brother Chris cried the news to him.

“He’s dead—­Uncle—­he went quite sudden at the end; an’ he’m to lie to Chagford wi’ gran’faither an’ gran’mother.”

“Dead!  My God!  An’ I never seed un more!  The best friend to me ever I had—­leastways I thought so till this marnin’.”

“You may think so still.”

“Ess, so I do.  A kind man inside his skin.  I knawed un better’n most people—­an’ he meant well when he married me, out of pure love to us both.”

“He’s left nobody no money but Mrs. Watson and you.”

“If ’tis five pound, ‘tis welcome to-day; an’ if ‘tis five shillin’, I’ll thank un an’ spend it ’pon a ring to wear for un.  He was a gude auld blid, an’ I’m sorry he’s gone.”

“Will, Uncle’s left ’e a thousand pound!”

“What!  You’m jokin’.”

“Solemn truth.  ’Tis in mother’s letter.”

A rush of joy lighted up the young man’s face.  He said not a word; then his eyes grew moist.

“To think as he could have loved a daft fule like me so well as that!  Me—­that never done nothin’—­no, not so much as to catch a dish of trout for un, now an’ again, when he was here.”

“You couldn’t, bein’ water-keeper.”

“What matter for that?  I ought to have poached for un, seein’ the manner of man he was.”

He kept silence for a while, then burst out—­

“I’ll buy the braavest marble stone can be cut.  Nobody shall do it but me, wi’ doves or anchors or some such thing on it, to make it a fine sight so long as the world goes on.”