A red flag flapped from a lofty pole at the foot of Steeperton, but Hicks, to whom the object and its significance were familiar, paid no heed and passed on towards Oke Tor. On one side the mass rose gradually up by steps and turrets; on the other, the granite beetled into a low cliff springing abruptly from the turf. Within its clefts and crannies there grew ferns, and to the north-east, sheltered under ledges from the hot sun, cattle and ponies usually stood or reclined upon such a summer day as this, and waited for the oncoming cool of evening before returning to pasture. On the present occasion, however, no stamp of hoof, snort of nostril, whisk of tail, and hum of flies denoted the presence of beasts. For some reason they had been driven elsewhere. Clement climbed the Tor, then stood upon its highest point, and turning his back to the sun, scanned the wide rolling distances over which he had tramped, and sought fruitlessly for an approaching horseman. But no particular hour had been specified, and he knew not and cared not how long he might have to wait. In a direction quite contrary to that on which the eyes of Hicks were set, sat John Grimbal upon his horse and talked with another man. They occupied a position at the lower-most end of Taw Marsh, beneath the Belstones; and they watched some seventy artillerymen busily preparing for certain operations of a nature to specially interest the master of the Red House. Indeed the pending proceedings had usually occupied his mind, to total exclusion of all other affairs; but to-day even more momentous events awaited him in the immediate future, and he looked from his companion along the great valley to where Oke Tor appeared, shrunk to a mere grey stone at the farther end. Of John Grimbal's life, it may now be said that it drifted into a confirmed and bitter misogyny. He saw no women, spoke of the sex with disrespect, and chose his few friends among men whose sporting and warlike instincts chimed with his own. Sport he pursued with dogged pertinacity, but the greater part of his leisure was devoted to the formation of a yeomanry corps at Chagford, and in this design he had made good progress. He still kept his wrongs sternly before his mind, and when the old bitterness began to grow blunted, deliberately sharpened it again, strangling alike the good work of time and all emotions of rising contentment and returning peace. Where was the wife whose musical voice and bright eyes should welcome his daily home-coming? Where were the laughing and pattering-footed little ones? Of these priceless treasures the man on the Moor had robbed him. His great house was empty and cheerless. Thus he could always blow the smouldering fires into active flame by a little musing on the past; but how long it might be possible to sustain his passion for revenge under this artificial stimulation of memory remained to be seen. As yet, at any rate, the contemplation of Will Blanchard's ruin was good to