Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt loudly applauded the decision to which his guest had come, for it was the knight's conviction that Dartmoor's high places offered health, work, and reward to all men. Himself a friend of the Prince Regent, he commanded attention from other personages also, and his own estates by the new settlement of Prince Town grew rapidly; his own enterprises awoke a sanguine spirit in others. Three days after the thunderstorm, Mr. Malherb sat with the High Bailiff of Dartmoor at the Duchy of Cornwall office; and, such was his impetuous energy, that within two months the walls of Fox Tor Farm began to rise. From Lew Trenchard came the slates (a circumstance that set men wondering, for reed thatch covered most heads upon the Moor in those days); and teams of a dozen oxen struggled over the waste, dragging sledges laden with stone. Roads there were none, and no wheeled vehicle had ever entered that wild valley. Malherb took up his temporary residence at an ancient tenement farm within five miles of his land, and daily he rode to the scene of action, planned and plotted, ordered and countermanded, now entered upon passing periods of doubt, now threw aside his dilemmas and turned to problems more easy of solution. In the placid homestead beside Exe awoke stir and bustle too, for the farm on the Moor was now progressing rapidly, and Annabel Malherb and her daughter Grace had learnt that their new dwelling was to be ready within a year--a time quite short in those leisurely days for the transference of a home. Mother and daughter contemplated the great change brooding over their existence, with lively hopes and fears. The enterprise loomed tremendous to their simple minds; but both trusted the master in their hearts, if at times their heads whispered treachery. The wife was of an ancient pattern, and set high religious significance on marriage vows; the child loved her stormy father, and bravely stood for him in the face of a critical and unsympathetic world. To Malherb's faults these women blinded themselves; his virtues they sang at all seasons. From Carew stock the matron sprang, and her noble blood, her steadfastness of view, her large trust in the goodness of Divine purpose, was all her dowry, for wealth she had none. Grace Malherb resembled her mother in mind and bearing. She was a simple, generous-hearted maiden, and her life had passed without storm or stress. She moved in the scented Devon lanes; she gathered the eglantine and wild roses in spring, at autumn plucked the scarlet corals of the iris or those glimmering green mosses that made fair vestment for the red earth. But now her eyes were lifted to Dartmoor, where its hills rose shadowy across the western sky; and awe and wonder widened the limits of her mind, and mystery awoke in dreams and added beauty to her face.