He flung half a crown upon the counter and went his way, while the men in eager concert cried, "So us will, your honour!" "Long life an' fortune to your honour!" and "Good luck to Fox Tor Farm!" When Malherb was gone they discussed the matter, and no emotion but a very active interest marked their attitude. "Dartymoor'll soon larn him not to fling half-crowns about," said Uncle Smallridge. "Ten shilling a week!" mused Richard Beer. "He must be made of money." "More likely soft in his head," answered a woman behind the bar. CHAPTER V DAWN With the following spring Fox Tor Farm was habitable, and Mrs. Malherb and her daughter prepared to enter their new home. They had spent the winter in Exeter, for the old farm by Exe passed into other hands at Christmas, but Mr. Malherb himself already lived upon the Moor. In February he had gone into residence with Kekewich, and though the place was still but partially completed, his labourers also began work upon the scene and made shift to dwell there. Good apartments for the people were now finished, and Mr. Malherb's cattle had also arrived to fill the fine yard and comfortable byres erected for their winter uses. Kekewich cried failure from the first, but none laboured more zealously to avert it, none toiled early and late with more strenuous diligence than he. True to his whim, the master denied Annabel Malherb and Grace one sight of Fox Tor Farm until they actually arrived to dwell there; and even then he so ordered their advent that it fell in darkness. At ten o'clock upon a night in mid-April, mother and daughter passed over the nocturnal Moor, vaguely felt its surrounding immensity, and turned from the unknown earth, where it rolled formless and vast around them, to the familiar moon, whose face they knew. From Holne, a border village whither they had driven by stage, Mrs. Malherb and her daughter now rode on pillions; while behind them came the tinkle of little bells and the thud of heavy hoofs where six pack-horses followed. Annabel sat behind her husband; while Grace had Harvey Woodman for her escort. Through the silent darkness they passed, and the mother listened to Malherb's hopes, and sometimes kissed the round ear next her while she echoed his sanguine mind. But Grace paid little heed to Woodman, who discoursed without tact upon the complicated miseries of a Dartmoor life, and explained how that his father, grandfather, great-grandfather, had all gone steadily downhill before the insidious Duchy. A granite cross at length loomed up against the sky on a lofty ridge, and its significance here uplifted upon the confines of her new life sent a throb to Mrs. Malherb's heart. "This be Ter Hill," said Harvey Woodman to Grace; "an' thicky cross be one of many set up around about by God-fearing men some time since Adam. Now, if you'll look down into the valley, you'll see a light like a Jack o' Lantern. That's your home, Miss."