’Twas all in the newspapers next day, of course, and all men agreed that never was such an escape from death afore.  In fact, my friend Amos was one of the wonders of the Dartmoor world for a long time afterwards.  He never got back the full use of his elbow, but weren’t a penny the worse any other way in a month and quite well enough to testify afore the law about all his adventures had showed him.

And Ernest turned out one of the vain murderers who be quite content to go down to history on the debit side so long as he’s famous, if only for sin.  He explained that Joe Gregory had always intended to come home from Exeter by way of Moreton, and that he had done so, and that Ernest had met him there and reckoned that particular wild, black night very well suited for putting the old man away.  He knew all about the codicil to Joe’s will, and having found the mine shaft months afore, used it as we know how.  He’d took Joe to see it on getting home, and knocked him in, just as he’d treated Amos after.  And ’twas all done for the land, which had become his god; and when Amos told his nephew he’d made no will, he was so good as signing his own death warrant.

They tried to fetch him in insane; but it didn’t work with the jury nor yet the judge, and Ernest Gregory was hanged for his sins to Exeter gaol; and Sarah White, who had meant to wed him, felt terrible glad it happened before and not after the wedding.

As for Vitifer and Furze Hill, now both the property of Amos Gregory, no doubt Duchy will get ’em after all some day.  In fact, Duchy always wins in the long run, as them mostly do who can afford to wait.

Our old parson preached a fine sermon on the affair after Ernest Gregory had gone to his reward; for he showed how by the wonderful invention of his Maker, Joe Gregory, though dead, yet was allowed to save his brother’s life and so proclaim the wonder of God to sinful man.  And no doubt all right-thinking people believed him.

Anyway, Amos set great store upon the electric torch ever after and it hangs above his mantelshelf to this day.  And henceforth he always took off his hat to a fox whenever he seed one; for he was a very grateful sort of man and never forgot a kindness.

No.  XIII

‘SPIDER’

Surely few things be sillier than the way we let human nature surprise us.  For my part ’tis only the expected that ever astonishes me, for men and women have grown so terrible tricky and jumpy and irregular nowadays, along of better education and one thing and another, that you didn’t ought to expect anything but the unexpected from ’em.  And I never do.