After three months of this beautiful but disquieting experience, Martin resigned himself to the conclusion that he was in love with Chris Blanchard. He became very cautious and timid before the discovery. He feared much and contemplated the future with the utmost distrust. Doubt racked him; he checked himself from planning courses of conduct built on mad presumptions. By night, as a sort of debauch, in those hours when man is awake and fancy free, he conceived of a happy future with Chris and little children about him; at morning light, if any shadow of that fair vision returned, he blushed and looked round furtively, as though some thought-reader's cold eye must be sneering at such presumption. He despaired of finding neutral ground from which his dry mind could make itself attractive to a girl. Now and again he told himself that the new emotion must be crushed, in that it began to stand between him and the work he had set himself to do for his county; but during more sanguine moods he challenged this decision and finally, as was proper and right, the flood of the man's first love drowned menhir and hut-circle fathoms deep, and demanded all his attention at the cost of mental peace. An additional difficulty appeared in the fact that the Blanchard family were responsible for John Grimbal's misfortune; and Martin, without confusing the two circumstances, felt that before him really lay the problem of a wife or a brother. When first he heard of the event that set Chagford tongues wagging so briskly, he rightly judged that John would hold him one of the conspirators; and an engagement to Chris Blanchard must certainly confirm the baffled lover's suspicions and part the men for ever. But before those words, as they passed through his brain, Martin Grimbal stopped, as the peasant before a shrine. "An engagement to Chris Blanchard!" He was too much a man and too deep merged in love to hesitate before the possibility of such unutterable happiness.