but unless they found him soon it was quite likely that he would not survive exposure on such a night. If so, Reuben had only himself to thank for it. He should have listened to his daughter, and either let George off his work or made him work near home. He did not pretend to himself that he loved this weakling son, or that his death would cause his fatherhood much grief, but he found himself with increasing definiteness brought up against the conviction that Boarzell was beating him, wringing its own out of him by slow, inexorable means, paying him back a hundred fold for every acre he took or furrow he planted.

He had become separated from the other searchers, and was alone on the west side of the Moor. The wind barked and howled, hurling itself upon him as he stood, beating his face with hail, which hissed into the dead tangles of the heather, while the stripped thorns yapped and rattled, and the bushes roared. So great was the tumult that he seemed to fall into it like a stone into a wave-it passed over him, round him, seemed even to pass under him, he was hardly conscious of the solid ground. The blackness was impenetrable, save where his lantern stained it with a yellow smudge. He shouted, but his voice perished in the din-it seemed as if his whole man, sight, voice, hearing, and sensation, was blurring into the storm, as if Boarzell had swamped him at last, made him merely one of its hundred voices, mocking the manhood which had tried so much against its earth.

The wind seemed to be laughing at him, as it bellowed up in gusts, struck him, sprayed him, roughed his hair out madly, smacked his cheeks, drove the rain into his skin, and then rumbled away with a hundred chatterings and sighings. It seemed to be telling him that as his breath was to this wind so was he himself to Boarzell. The wind was the voice of the Moor, and it told him that in fighting Boarzell, he did not fight the mere earth,

an agglomeration of lime and clay which he could trample and compel, but all the powers behind it. In arming himself against Boarzell he armed himself against the whole of nature's huge resources, the winds, the storms, the droughts, the early and the latter rain, the poisons in plants, and the death in stones, the lusts which spilling over from the beasts into the heart of man slay him from within himself. He had armed himself against all these, and once again the old words sang in his head-" Canst thou draw out Leviathan with a hook? or bore his jaw through with a thorn? Will he make a covenant with thee? Wilt thou take him for a servant for ever? "

He had shrunk into the rattling shelter of some thornbushes. They scraped their boughs like grotesque violins, and every other moment they would sweep down over him and shut him into a cavern of snapping twigs. He was soaked to the skin and his teeth chattered. He lay close to the earth, seeking shelter even from the skeleton heather which writhed woody stems all round him. He cursed. Must he spend the night here, lost and grovelling, to listen while Boarzell screeched its triumph over his cold, drenched body. . . .

I Canst thou draw out Leviathan with a hook? or bore his jaw through with a thorn? Will he make a covenant with thee? Wilt thou take him for a servant for ever?

"His heart is as firm as a stone; yea, as hard as a piece of the nether millstone.

"The sword of him that layeth at him cannot hold ; the spear, the dart, nor the habergeon.

"He esteemeth iron as straw, and brass as rotten wood.

"Sharp stones are under him . . .”

A crash of thunder and a spit of lightning tore open the sky, and for a moment Reuben saw the slope of the Moor livid in the flash, and the crest of firs standing

against the split and tumbling clouds. The air rang, screamed, hissed, rushed, and rumbled. Reuben, hardly knowing what he did, had sprung to his feet.

"I'll have wheat growing here in a twelvemonth!' he shouted.

§ 12.

"

The dawn broke over Boarzell like a reconciliation. The clamouring voices of wind and trees were still, and only a low sobbing came now and then from the woods. In the sky pale streamers of rose barred and striped a spreading violet. One or two clouds flew low, and slowly pilled themselves, scattering into the fields. On every blade of grass and twig of thorn, on every leaf and spine, glimmered pearls of rain, washing the air with a faint scent of stagnant water, perfuming it with the steams of sodden grass.

Reuben crept out of his thorn cavern and looked down the slope. At the bottom by Socknersh one or two lanterns moved through the dusk. He stiffly threw up his arm and tried to shout. His throat felt cramped and swollen, and it was not till after one or two attempts that a sound pitifully like a bleat came out of it. A voice answered him from the hollow, and then he saw that they were carrying something. He limped painfully down to them. Richard, Boorman, and Handshut carried a hurdle between them, and on the hurdle lay a draggled boy, whose clenched hand clutched a tuft of earth and grass as a victim might clutch a handful of his murderer's hair.

"Is he dead?" asked Reuben.

"Yes, mäaster," said Boorman.

Richard's mouth twisted in contemptuous silenceHandshut being young and silly was crying.

"He wurn't on the new land," continued Boorman, "he'd fallen into the ditch by Socknersh palings-that's why we cudn't find un. Reckon as he'd felt the

Q

fitses coming on un, and tried to git höame, pore souly."

'When did you find him? "Half an hour agone.

He'd bin dead for hours, mäaster. He must have choked in the ditch-see, his mouth is full of mud."

Reuben drew back with a shiver. He limped behind the little procession towards Odiam, slouching for the first time in his life. In spite of his conquests he and Boarzell still were quits, still had to prove which was the better man. George, lying there muddy, white, and crumpled, was a sign that the Moor had its victories, in spite of the spreading corn.

He looked down at George-the boy's face had an unhuman chalky appearance under the mudstains; on the forehead a vein had swollen up in black knots, others showed pale, almost aqueous, through the stretched skin. After all, George was the weakest, the best-spared of his children. This thought comforted and stiffened him a little, and he went into the house with something of his old uprightness.

The other children were in the kitchen. They had seen their dead brother from the window, and stood mute and tearless as he was carried into the room. Reuben gave orders for him to be taken upstairs and the doctor to be sent for. No one else spoke. Tilly's breast heaved stormily, and he did not like the dull blaze in her eyes. Strange to say, of his whole family, excepting Pete, she was the only one of whom he was not faintly contemptuous. She had spirit, that girl-he prophesied that she would turn out a shrew.

For the very reason that he could not despise her, he took upon himself to bully her now.

Get me some tea," he said roughly, "I'm cold."

§ 13.

Though there had been no open rupture, from that day forward Odiam was divided into two camps. On one side were Reuben and Pete, on the other, Tilly and Richard. Benjamin and Caro were neutrals; they were indifferent to vital issues, one engrossed in snatching holidays, the other in hankering after she did not quite know what. Pete had always been a good son, hardworking and enthusiastic, not exactly a comrade, but none the less an ally, always to be depended on and now and then taken into confidence. He seemed to accept his father's attitude towards George's death and to resent Richard's and Tilly's. That spring he beat Squinty Bream at Robertsbridge Fair, and gave half the purse to Reuben to buy a chaff-cutter.

Of the enemy Tilly was the most effective-Reuben did not quite know how to deal with her. His inability to despise her told heavily against him. Richard, on the other hand, he despised from the depths of his heart. The boy was insufferable, for he still had his old knack of saving his skin. It was nearly always impossible to pick any definite faults in his work-it was wonderful how he managed to combine unwillingness with efficiency. He also had an irritating habit of speaking correct English, and of alluding to facts and events of which Reuben had never heard in such a manner as to make it impossible for him not to show his ignorance.

Reuben never lost a chance of baiting him, he jibed at his squeamishness and fine manners, at his polite way of eating and the trouble he took to clean his nails; he despised him all the more for occasionally getting the better of him, verbally at any rate, in these encounters. One night at supper Reuben, having actually succeeded in finding this sneering son at fault, abused him roundly for the shocking condition of the ewes' fleeces. Richard