warden!' No doubt he was shocked to think of what he had done; but he didn't show it. He went his way with never a word of apology neither. But a righteous creature."
"I quite agree. I listened to him," said Mr. Snell. "I wasn't saved afore; but I have been ever since."
A labourer laughed.
"You're safe enough, Simon. It ban't in you to do nothing wrong."
"I hope not, Timothy Mattacott, but I have my evil thoughts with the worst among you," answered Snell. "I often wish I had more money--and yet a well paid man."
"You leat chaps all get more than you're worth," said Bowden. "Why, 'tis only when the snow-banks choke the water that you have anything to do, save walk about with your hands in your pockets and your pipes in your teeth."
Mr. Snell had certain miles of Drake's historic waterway under his control. This aqueduct leads from the upper channels of West Dart and winds onward and downward to Plymouth. Behind Lowery, Simon's home, it passed, and for a space of two miles was in his care. They argued now upon the extent and gravity of Snell's task, and all agreed that he was fortunate. Then Mr. Maunder, returning to the point from which conversation had started, bade Reuben explain his unusual hilarity.
"Without a doubt you was above your nature when us first came in, 'Dumpling'--as Moses here pointed out. And if any good fortune have fallen to you, I beg you'll name it, for there's not a man in this bar but will be glad to hear about it," declared the policeman.
"Hear, hear, Maunder!" said Mr. Moses; "your good be our good, neighbour."
"Thank you kindly, souls. 'Twas nought, and yet I won't say that. A letter, in fact, from an old London friend of mine. A very onusual sort of man by the name of Fogo. I may have mentioned him when telling about the old fights."
"Be it the gentleman you call 'Frosty-faced Fogo'?" inquired Mattacott.
"The same," answered Reuben. "'Frosty-faced Fogo' is in Devonsheer--at Plymouth, if you'll believe it. There's a twenty-round spar between two boys there, and Fogo, at the wish of a sporting blade in London, who's backing one of 'em, be down to see the lad through. And what's made me so cheerful is just this: that, for the sake of old times, 'Frosty-face' is coming on here to put up with me for a week, or maybe more. You'll hear some wonders, I warn 'e. That man's knowed the cream of the P.R.s and pitched more Rings, along with old Tom Oliver, the Commissary-General, than any other living creature."
"My father must come down for to see him," said David. "There's nought rejoices him like valour, and he wouldn't miss the sight of such a character for money."
"All are welcome," declared Shillabeer with restrained enthusiasm. "I shall hope to have a sing-song for Mr. Fogo one night. And he'll tell you about Bendigo, and Ben Gaunt, and Burke, 'the Deaf 'Un,' and many of the great mills in the forties. I was the very daps of Ben Gaunt myself--though he stood half an inch higher. We was neither of us in the first rank for science, but terrible strong and gluttons for punishment. Gaunt was Champion in his day, but never to be named alongside Cribb or Dutch Sam or Crawley or Jem Belcher."
"When's he to be here?" asked Mr. Maunder. "I feel almost as if such a man of war threatens to break the peace by coming amongst us."
"You're a fool," answered David, bluntly. "A man like you, instead of being in such a mortal dread of peace-breaking, ought to welcome the chance of it now and again. If I was a policeman, I should soon get tired of just paddling up and down through Sheep's Tor mud, week in, week out, and never have nought to do but help a lame dog over a stile or tell some traveller the way. 'Tis a tame and spiritless life."
"The tamer the better," declared Ernest Maunder, frankly. "I like it tame. 'Tis my business to maintain law and order, and that I will do, Bowden. And to tell me I'm a fool is very disorderly in you, as well you know. I may have my faults, but a fool I'm not, as this bar will bear me out."
"I merely say," returned David, "that if I was a peeler, I should want to earn my money, and have a dash at life, and make a stir, if 'twas only against poachers here and there."
"Shows how little you know about it," answered Maunder. He was a placid, straw-coloured man, with an official mind. "You say 'poachers.' Well, poachers ban't my business. Poachers come under a different law, and unless I have the office from headquarters to set out against 'em to the neglect of my beat, I can't do it. I'm part of a machine, and if I got running about as you say, I should throw the machine out of order."
"What for do you want to speak to the man like that?" asked Mattacott, who was the policeman's friend. "You Bowdens all think yourselves so much above the common people--God knows why for. One would guess you was spoiling for a fight yourself. Well, I daresay, the 'Dumpling' here could find somebody at your own weight as wouldn't fear a set to with you."
"Why not you?" said Bowden. "When you like, Mattacott."
"What a fiery twoad 'tis! Why, you'm a stone heavier than me, and years younger."
Mr. Shillabeer regarded David with some professional interest.
"You'm a nice built chap, but just of that awkward weight 'twixt light and middle. In the old days I knowed some of the best bruisers you could wish to see were the same; but 'twas always terrible difficult to get 'em a job, because they was thought too light for the heavies and too heavy for the lights. But Dutch Sam in his day, and Tom Sayers in his, showed how eleven-stone men, and even ten-stone men, can hit as hard as anything with a fist. As for you, Bowden, you've a bit of the fighting cut--inclined to be snake-headed, though your forehead don't slope enough. But you're a thought old now."
"Not that I want to fight any man without a cause," said David. "If there's a reason, I'd fight anything on two legs--light or heavy--but not for fun. And I hope you men--Mattacott and Ernest Maunder--haven't took offence where none was meant."
"Certainly not," declared Mr. Maunder. "I'll take anything afore I take offence. 'Tis my place to keep the peace, and if I don't set an example of it, who should? Twice only in my life have I drawed my truncheon in the name of the Queen, and I hope I'll never have no call to do it thrice. Have a drink, David; then I must be going."
But Bowden declined with thanks, and the company soon separated.
When he was alone, fired by the prospect of seeing his old friend once more, Reuben Shillabeer took a damp towel and, visiting each in turn, polished up the portraits of a dozen famous pugilists which hung round the walls of his bar. Where sporting prints of race-horses and fox-hunting are generally to be met with, Mr. Shillabeer had a circle of prize-fighters; and now he rubbed the yellow stains of smoke off the glasses that covered them, so that the stern, but generally open and often handsome countenances of the fighting giants looked forth from their grimy frames. Before a print of the famous 'Tipton Slasher' Mr. Shillabeer paused, and thoughtfully stroked his battered nose.
"Ah, Bill Perry," he said, "if I'd been ten year younger--"
Then having extinguished two oil lamps, the old man retired and left his gallery of the great in darkness.
CHAPTER VII
DENNYCOOMBE WOOD
Of dingles under Dartmoor there is none so fair as Dennycoombe. Here wood and water, rock and heath, wide spaces and sweet glens mingle together, and make a theatre large enough for the pageant of the seasons, a haunt small enough to be loved as a personal possession and abiding treasure. Dennycoombe tends upward to Coombeshead, and the little grey farmhouse of Bartholomew Stanbury dominates the scene, and stands near the apex of the valley. At this hour, after noon in early December, a croft or two made light on the hill, where green of turnips and glaucous green of swedes ran parallel, and black tilled earth also broke the medley of the waste. Then winked out the farm from twin dormer windows--a thing of moorstone colour, yet splashed as to the lintel-post with raw whitewash, so that it should be seen in the darkness of moonless nights. Beneath, through a bottom of willow scrub, furze and stunted oak, the Dennycoombe stream tumbled and rattled to join Meavy far below. A single 'clapper' of granite spanned this brook for foot-passengers; while above it, under heathery banks, the rivulet crossed a cart-track at right angles, and widened there to make a ford.