



Produced by Al Haines









  THE
  THREE BROTHERS

  BY

  EDEN PHILLPOTTS

  AUTHOR OF "THE SECRET WOMAN," "THE AMERICAN
  PRISONER," "CHILDREN OF THE MIST," ETC.



  New York
  THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
  1909
  _All rights reserved_




  COPYRIGHT, 1909,
  BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

  Set up and electrotyped.  Published January, 1909.



  _Norwood Press
  J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
  Norwood, Mass., U.S.A._




  TO
  MY BROTHER
  HERBERT MACDONALD PHILLPOTTS
  A SMALL TRIBUTE OF
  GREAT AFFECTION




THE THREE BROTHERS



BOOK I



CHAPTER I

From Great Trowlesworthy's crown of rosy granite the world extended to
the moor-edge, and thence, by mighty, dim, air-drenched passages of
earth and sky, to the horizons of the sea.  A clear May noon
illuminated the waste, and Dartmoor, soaking her fill of sunshine, ran
over with it, so that Devon's self spread little darker of bosom than
the grey and silver of high clouds lifted above her, mountainous under
the sun.

Hills and plains were still mottled with the winter coat of the
heather, and the verdure of the spearing grasses suffered diminution
under a far-flung pallor of dead blades above breaking green; but the
face of Dartmoor began to glow and the spring gorse leapt like a
running flame along it.  At water's brink was starry silver of
crow-foot, and the heath, still darkling, sheltered sky-blue milk-wort
and violet and the budding gold of the tormentil.

One white road ran due north-east and south-west across the desert, and
round about it, like the tents of the Anakim, rose huge snowy hillocks
and ridges silver-bright in the sun.  Here the venerable Archæan
granites of Dartmoor, that on Trowlesworthy blush to a ruddy splendour,
and elsewhere break beautifully in fair colour and fine grain through
the coarser porphyritic stone, suffer a change, and out of their
perishing constituents emerges kaolin, or china clay.

A river met this naked road, and at their junction the grey bridge of
Cadworthy saddled Plym.  Beyond, like the hogged back of a brown bear,
Wigford Down rolled above the gorges of Dewerstone, and further yet,
retreated fields and forests, great uplifted plains, and sudden
elevations that glimmered along their crests with the tender green of
distant larch and beech.

The atmosphere was opalescent, milky, sweet, as though earth's sap,
leaping to the last tree-tip and bursting bud, exuded upon air the very
visible incense and savour of life.  Running water and lifting lark
made the music of this hour; and at one spot on the desert a girl's
voice mingled with them and enlarged the melody, for it was gentle and
musical and belonged to the springtime.

She sat high on Trowlesworthy, where the rushes chatter and where, to
their eternal treble, the wind strikes deep organ music from the
forehead of the tor.  From the clefts of the rocks around her, where
foxes homed sometimes and the hawk made her nest, there hung now russet
tassels and tufts of dead lady-fern; and above this rack of the old
year sprang dark green aigrettes of the new.

Stonecrops and pennyworts also flourished amid the uncurling fronds;
aloft, the heath and whortle made curls for the great tor's brow;
below, to the girl's feet, there sloped up boulders that shone with
fabric of golden-brown mosses and dappled lichens, jade-green and grey.
The woodsorrel had climbed hither, and its frail bells and sparkling
trefoils glittered on the earth.

The sun shone with a thready lustre over the million flattened dead
rushes roundabout this place, and its light spread out upon them into a
pool of pale gold.  Thus a radiance as of water extended here and the
wind, fretting all this death, heightened the deception; while the
scattered rocks shone brilliantly against so much reflected light and
looked like boulders half submerged at the fringe of a glittering sea.

The girl laughed and