“Nor yet ice, like you, I should hope. You’re engaged to the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen in my life, and the best; and you take it as if it was your right instead of your frightfully good luck. It’s only because you don’t know the world that you are so infernally complacent about her, Richard. If you knew all that I do—” The other sneered in a tone of levity. “A wonnerful lady’s man you—by all accounts! But don’t think I’m afeared of you. Might have been jealous afore you comed—not since.” Anthony grew red as the dead asphodel foliage under his feet in the bogs. “That’s as much as to say I’m a fool.” “Why so? It’s as much as to say you’re honest—that’s all.” “That wasn’t what you meant when you spoke. You were laughing because you know you are sharper than I am. You may be, but you’re not sharp enough to know your luck. You’ve told me pretty plainly what I am; now I’ll tell you what you are—a good shot and a good sportsman all round, but no other good that I can see. You think a jolly sight too much of yourself to make a good husband, anyway. If Jane realised—” “Mind your awn business!” thundered out the other, “and keep her name off your tongue henceforward. D’you think I doan’t know her a million times better than you do? D’you think us wants lessons from you after all these years, you—” “I can make you angry, then, though I am a born fool?” “Yes, you can; an’ you damn soon will if you’m not more careful of your speech. I doan’t want to take law in my own hands an’ give you a thrashing; but that’ll I do if you touch this matter again. Who are you, to tell me my duty to my maiden?” “As to what you’ll do or won’t do,” answered Maybridge, growing very rosy again, “there’s two sides to that. I’d have asked you to box weeks ago, only I’m taller and heavier, and I thought you would think it unsportsmanlike. But now—when you please. As for Miss Jane, I shall speak to her, and see her, and go to church with her just as often as she’ll let me, without asking leave from you or anybody. So now you know.” Anthony swung off over the Moor, and Richard, pursuing the way to his hut on the shoulder of the tor, let the other depart unanswered. This sudden and unexpected breach rather pleased the keeper. He had always held Anthony to be a fool, and the fact seemed now proved beyond further dispute. It was not until he had lived through the loneliness of a long day and night upon the warren that the young man viewed his situation differently. Then three harpies—wrath, resentment and a natural jealousy—sprang full-fledged into being, and drove him home before them. As for Maybridge, smarting under a sense of insult and a worse sense that he deserved it, the young man strove to excuse himself to his conscience. He assured himself many times that Richard Daccombe was unworthy of Jane Stanberry in every possible respect. And there came a day when he told her that he thought so. CHAPTER IV