Maurice Malherb was among those first attracted by the prospect. A famous Dartmoor hero had influenced him in this decision, and he was now spending a week with Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt, at Tor Royal, and examining the knight's operations in husbandry. He saw Dartmoor for the first time, and the frank, stern face of it challenged him. For three days he rode forth alone; and then he wandered to Cater's Beam and discovered the dewy cup where rivers rise beneath it. To the right and left he looked and smiled. His dark eyes drank up the possibilities of the land. Already he pictured dykes for draining of the marshes; already he saw crops ripening and slow oxen drawing the ploughshare in the valley. Of the eternal facts, hard as granite and stern as nature, that lurked here under the dancing summer air, he knew nothing. The man was fifteen hundred feet above the sea, in the playground of the west wind. The inveterate peat encompassed him--the hungry, limeless peat, that eats bone like a dog and fattens upon the life-blood of those who try to tame it. He gazed upon a wilderness where long winters bury the land in snow or freeze it to the granite core for months--save where warm springs twinkle in the mosses and shine like wet eyes out of a white face. Here the wise had observed and passed upon their way; but Maurice Malherb was not wise. August ruled the hour; the ling bloomed under the heat; a million insects murmured and made a pleasant melody. Dartmoor for a moment smiled, and weary of the tame monotony of green meads, hedges elm-clad, and fields of ruddy earth, Malherb caught hope from this crystal air and enormous scene outspread, fell to picturing a notable future, and found his pulses leap to the great plans that thronged his mind. He was of a square and sturdy habit of body. A clean-shorn countenance, deep-set black eyes beneath black brows, a large mouth underhung, and a nose very broad but finely moulded, were the distinguishing attributes of his face. Restlessness was alike the characteristic of his expression and of his nature. Generosity and pride dominated him in turn. His failures were the work of other people; his successes he claimed himself. His wife, his son, his daughter, the blood in his veins, the wine in his cellar, were all the best in the world. His demonian temper alone he deplored; yet in that, also, he found matter for occasional satisfaction; since, by a freak of atavism, he resembled at every physical and mental point an ancestor from the spacious times, whose deeds on deep and unknown seas had won him the admiration and friendship of Drake.