"All good," admitted Malherb, "except in one particular. A life of peace is not to be prayed for. Peace is rust, and makes against human progress. Now, ladies, it is time that you retired." Annabel and her daughter rose, and as he bid his girl "good night," the master's thoughts returned to her great escape. Whereupon he kissed her thrice, instead of once, and said, for her ear alone, "Thank God! Thank God!" in an abrupt and brusque but very earnest fashion. CHAPTER IX CHILDE'S TOMB Mr. Norcot found the life at Fox Tor Farm so much to his taste that he prolonged his visit, and sent the young man, Thomas Putt, with a message to his sister Gertrude at Chagford for more clothes. He felt secretly hopeful that each day was strengthening his position, and, indeed, by riding to the War Prison and seeing the Commandant on behalf of Cecil Stark, he won some thanks and a definite expression of gratitude from Grace Malherb. "They have released him out of the cachot," said Peter. "Once more he labours at the place of worship, 'pride in his port, defiance in his eye.'" Together the man and maid continued their excursions upon Dartmoor, and Grace enjoyed both to hear and to tell stories and legends of the ancient desert. Its romance found an echo in her youthful spirit and awoke new intellectual interests in her life. She soon learned the story of each lonely circle, uplifted monolith, and empty barrow from the age of stone; of every ruined cot or cross erected in times mediæval. Among these last, perhaps the most famous upon the Moor lay now within Malherb's own borders. "Childe's Tomb" had met Grace's eyes when first she opened them upon a Dartmoor dawn. By a rivulet at the edge of Fox Tor Mire it stood, and she had gleaned its story and mourned the fate of the ancient hunter who fell there in winter tempest. Mr. Norcot, too, was familiar with the narrative, and since early boyhood he had gloated over its horrid details. Now he pretended but a misty recollection of the tale, so that he might listen to Grace. The thing was in their eyes at the time, for they started on horseback and rode past it. Beside the cross, Harvey Woodman, his son, Richard Beer, Thomas Putt, and another labourer were collected at a task. They worked upon each side of the little river that ran beside "Childe's Tomb," and levelled the banks to make a ford at a shallow point of the water. Here they talked together when aching backs required rest; and it happened that their master and his guest were the theme of the moment. "I'll hold for Mister Peter," declared Putt. "He gived me a week's wages for going to Chaggyford; an' he told me just so friendly as you might, when he seed me bringing in trout, that a grasshopper was a killing bait at this time of year. Of course I know as much about grasshoppers as any man living; yet 'twas a very great condescension in him."