When Melinda returned, she found her father in the best of tempers and the tea things cleared away and washed up. "My!" she exclaimed. "What a husband you'll make some of these days, Mr. Maynard!" "And he's going to come again," said Enoch. "He's promised. We'll set the world right between us afore we've done--him and me. And next time you go up over to Falcon Farm, you've got to take the man a book. I can't put my hand on it for the minute; but he's got to read it." "You let what my father says go in at one ear and out at the other," warned Melinda. "He's a dangerous old man and we all know it." "You won't fright him," declared Enoch. "He's going to be a great thinker some day, same as me!" Then Lawrence went his way. CHAPTER IX A HOLIDAY FOR SUSAN The church of St. Peter's at Buckland-in-the-Moor has a fine waggon roof and a noble little oak screen. The windows are mostly of uncoloured glass and the light of day illuminates the building frankly. It stands, with its burying ground round about it, on a little plateau uplifted among sycamore and pine. A few old tombs lie in the yard with others of recent date; but for the most part, on this January day, the frosty grass glittered over the mounds of unrecorded dead. The battlemented tower, sturdy and four square, rose in the midst of meadows at a step in the great slope from the Beacon. Trees surrounded the gap, ascending above and falling below in their winter nakedness. It was a place of peace and great distinction, marked by the fine quality of the human care devoted to it. The five bells rang through the frosty morning, and Melinda Honeysett, with her brother, Jerry Withycombe, stood by the parapet of the burying ground and looked across the valley, where Lower Town lay far beneath upon the other side. It glimmered pale grey amidst its dim orchards and ploughed lands, and beyond it Dartmoor flung out ragged ridges from south to north, clean and dark under the low sun. Beneath was a gorge where the land broke and fell steeply to the junction of the Webburn Rivers at Lizwell Meet; and so still was the day in the interval of the bell music, that Jerry and his sister could hear the sister waters mingling and sending a murmur upward. The man's eyes sought the roof tree of Green Hayes, which made a respectable splash above the lesser habitations of Lower Town; and Melinda knew very well of whom he was thinking. Jerry resembled his father, the old fox-hunter. He was large and finely put together, but he lacked his father's intelligence and possessed no great individuality of character. At present he was in love, and the fact transformed him, lent its own temporary qualities and lifted him into a personality.