“Theer’s plenty room ’pon the auld slate, for that matter,” said Chris.

“Damn the auld slate!  The man shall have white marble carvings, I tell ’e, if I’ve got to spend half the money buying ’em.  He b’lieved in me; he knawed I’d come to gude; an’ I’m grateful to un.”

During the evening Will was unusually silent and much busied with thought.  He knew little of the value of money, and a thousand pounds to his mind represented possibilities wholly beyond the real power of that sum to achieve.  Chris presently visited the vicarage, and after their supper, brother and sister sat late and discussed the days to come.  When the girl retired, Will’s thoughts for a moment concerned themselves with the immediate past rather than the future; and then it was that he caught himself blankly before his own argument of the morning.  To him the force of the contention, now that his position was magically changed, appeared strong as before.  A little sophistry had doubtless extricated him from this dilemma, but his nature was innocent of it, and his face grew longer as the conclusion confronting him became more clear.  From his own logic—­a mysterious abstraction, doubtless—­he found it difficult to escape without loss of self-respect.  He still held that the deed, impossible to him as a pauper, might be performed without sacrifice of dignity or importance by a man of his present fortune.  So the muddle-headed youth saw his duty straight ahead of him; and he regretted it heartily, but did not attempt to escape from it.

Ten minutes later, in his working clothes, he set out to Monks Barton, carrying an old horn lantern that had swung behind his father’s caravan twenty years before.  At the farm all lights were out save one in the kitchen; but Will went about his business as silently as possible, and presently found the spade where he had flung it, the barrow where he had overthrown it in the morning.  So he set to work, his pipe under his nose, his thoughts afar off in a golden paradise built of Uncle Ford’s sovereigns.

Billy Blee, whose attic window faced out upon the northern side of the farm, had gone to bed, but he was still awake, and the grunt of a wheelbarrow quickly roused him.  Gazing into the night he guessed what was doing, dragged on his trousers, and hurried down-stairs to his master.

The miller sat with his head on his hand.  His pipe was out and the “night-cap” Phoebe had mixed for him long ago, remained untasted.

“Guy Fawkes an ’angels! here’s a thing!  If that Jack-o’-lantern of a bwoy ban’t back again.  He’m delvin’ theer, for all the world like a hobgoblin demon, red as blood in the flicker of the light.  I fancied’t was the Dowl hisself.  But ’t is Blanchard, sure.  Theer’s some dark thought under it, I’ll lay, or else he wants to come around ’e again.”

His master doubted not that Billy was dreaming, but he went aloft and looked to convince himself.  In silence and darkness they watched Will at work.  Then Mr. Blee asked a question as the miller turned to go.