aboriginal men the Moor spread forth the same horizon of solemn enfolding hills, and where twinkle the red hides of the moor-man's heifers through upstanding fern, in sunny coombs and hawthorn thickets, yesterday the stone-man's cattle roamed and the little eyes of a hidden bear followed their motions. Here, indeed, the first that came in the flesh are the last to vanish in their memorials; here Nature, to whom the hut-circle of granite, all clad in Time's lichen livery of gold and grey, is no older than the mushroom ring shining like a necklace of pearls within it--Nature may follow what course she will, may build as she pleases, may probe to the heart of things, may pursue the eternal Law without let from the pigmies; and here, if anywhere from man's precarious standpoint, shall he perceive the immutable and observe a presentment of himself in those ephemera that dance above the burn at dawn, and ere twilight passes gather up their gauze wings and perish. According to individual temperament this pregnant region attracts and fascinates the human spectator or repels him. Martin Grimbal loved Dartmoor and, apart from ties of birth and early memories, his natural predilections found thereon full scope and play. He was familiar with most of those literary productions devoted to the land, and now developed an ambition to add some result of personal observation and research to extant achievements. He went to work with method and determination, and it was not until respectable accumulations of notes and memoranda already appeared as the result of his labours that the man finally--almost reluctantly--reconciled himself to the existence of another and deeper interest in his life than that furnished by the grey granite monuments of the Moor. Hide it from himself he could no longer, nor yet wholly from others. As in wild Devon it is difficult at any time to escape from the murmur of waters unseen, so now the steady flood of this disquieting emotion made music at all waking hours in Martin's archaeologic mind, shattered his most subtle theories unexpectedly, and oftentimes swept the granite clean out of his head on the flood of a golden river.