But had his cousin, with Asmodeus-flight, beheld Clement during the subsequent hours which he spent alone, it is possible that the wheelwright had felt amply repaid for his trouble. Not until dawn stole grey along the village street; not until sparrows in the thatch above him began their salutation to the morning; not until Chagford rookery had sent forth a harmonious multitude to the hills and valleys did Clement's aching eyes find sleep. For hours he tossed and turned, now trembling with rage, now prompted by some golden thread in the tangled mazes of his mind to discredit the thing reported. Blanchard, as it seemed, had come deliberately and maliciously between him and an opportunity to win work. He burnt to know what he should do; and, like a flame of forked light against the sombre background of his passion, came the thought of another who hated Blanchard too. Will's secret glowed and gleamed like the writing on the wall; looking out, Hicks saw it stamped on the dark earth and across the starry night; and he wished to God that the letters might so remain to be read by the world when it wakened. Finally he slept and dreamed that he had been to the Red House, that he had spoken to John Grimbal, and returned home again with a bag of gold. When his mother came to call him he was lying half uncovered in a wild confusion of scattered bed-clothes; and his arms and body were jerking as a dog's that dreams. She saw a sort of convulsion pinch and pucker his face; then he made some inarticulate sounds--as it were a frantic negation; and then the noise of his own cry awakened him. He looked wildly round and lifted his hands as though he expected to find them full. "Where is it? Where is it? The bag of money? I won't--I can't--Where is it, I say?" "I wish I knawed, lovey. Dream-gawld, I'm afeared. You've bin lying cold, an' that do allus breed bad thoughts in sleep. 'Tis late; I done breakfast an hour ago. An' Okehampton day, tu. Coach'll be along in twenty minutes." He sighed and dragged the clothes over himself. "You'd best go to-day, mother. The ride will do you good, and I have plenty to fill my time at home." Mrs. Hicks brightened perceptibly before this prospect. She was a little, faded woman, with a brown face and red-rimmed, weak eyes, washed by many years of sorrow to the palest nondescript colour. She crept through the world with no ambition but to die out of the poorhouse, no prayer but a petition that the parish might not bury her at the end, no joy save in her son. Life at best was a dreary business for her, and an occasional trip to Okehampton represented about the only brightness that ever crept into it. Now she bustled off full of excitement to get the honey, and, having put on a withered bonnet and black shawl, presently stood and waited for the omnibus.