But, after he’d been along at Vitifer five years, I don’t think a living soul felt anything but kindly to Ernest, and when it was rumoured that he’d got brave enough to go courting Sarah White from Postbridge, everybody wished him luck, including his uncles—­especially Amos himself; for Joe’s younger brother was very friendly to the Postbridge Whites, and them who thought they knew, always said how he’d offered for Jenny White twenty-five years before and might very like have won her if she hadn’t loved the water-keeper on East Dart better and married him instead.

Then happened the wondrous mystery of Joe Gregory.  ’Twas just before Christmas—­rough stormy weather and not much doing on the high ground—­when Joe set out early one morning for Exeter to see his lawyers.  He’d done very well that year—­better than Amos—­and he was taking a matter of one hundred and fifty pounds in cash to Exeter for his man of business to invest for him.  And Ernest drove him in to Ashburton, at cocklight of a stormy day, and was going in again that evening to meet his uncle and fetch him home.

All went well, and at the appointed time Joe’s nephew set out once more with a light trap and a clever horse, after dark, to meet the evening train.  And no more was heard till somewhere about ten o’clock of that night.  Then Amos Gregory, just finishing his nightcap and knocking out his pipe to go to bed, much to his astonishment heard somebody banging on the front door of Furze Hill.  Guessing it was some night-foundered tramp, he cussed the wanderer to hell; but cussing was only an ornament in his speech, for a tenderer creature really never lived, and he wouldn’t have turned a stray cat from his door that fierce night, let alone a human.

It weren’t no tramp, however; it proved to be his nephew Ernest, and the young man was clad in his oilskins and dripping with the storm rain and so frightened as a rabbit.

In a word, he’d been to Ashburton and waited for the appointed train, only to find his uncle hadn’t come back by it.  And so he bided, till the last train of all, and still Joe hadn’t turned up.  So Ernest drove home, hoping to find a telegram had come meanwhile and been brought up from Merripit post office.  But there weren’t no telegram; and now he was properly feared and had come over to Amos to know what did ought to be done.

First thing to do, in the opinion of Amos, was to pour a good dollop of gin down Ernest’s neck; then, when the shaking chap had got a bit of fight in him, he explained that till the morn they were powerless to take action.

“I know his lawyer, because Cousins and Slark be my lawyers also,” said Amos; “and they always was the family men of business, so if us hear nought when the post office opens to-morrow, we’ll send off a telegram to them; and if they’ve got nothing to say, then we must tell the police.”

Ernest was a good bit down-daunted and said he felt cruel sure evil had over-got his uncle, and Amos didn’t like it neither, for a more orderly man than Joe Gregory and one more steadfast in doing what he promised couldn’t easily be found.  However, they had to suffer till morning, and Ernest went back to Vitifer, which stood not quarter of a mile away.