Chapter 3

Reuben had bought thirty-five more acres of Boarzell in '81, and thirty in '84. The first piece was on the Flightshot side of the Moor, by Cheat Land, the second stretched from the new ground by Totease over to Burntbarns. Now only about fifty acres, including the Fair-place and the crest, remained to be won outside the Grandturzel inclosure. Bardon publicly announced his intention never to sell the Fair-place to Backfield. Flightshot and Odiam had not been drawn together by Richard's marriage. At first Reuben had feared that the Squire might take liberties on the strength of it, and had been stiffer than ever in his unavoidable intercourse with the Manor. But Bardon had been, if anything, stiffer still. He thoroughly disapproved of Backfield as an employer of labour—some of his men were housed, with their families, in two old barns converted into cottages at the cheapest rate—and as he was too hard up to refuse to sell him Boarzell, he could express his disgust only by his attitude. Fine shades of manner were apt to be lost on Reuben, but about the refusal to sell the Fair-place there could be no mistake.

Meantime he cast covetous and hopeful eyes on the Grandturzel inclosure. Realf was doing nothing with it, and his affairs were not so prosperous as they used to be.[Pg 388] His abandonment of the struggle had not changed his luck, and a run of bad luck—the usual farmer's tale of poor harvests, dead cows, blighted orchards, and low prices—had plunged Grandturzel nearly as deep as Odiam had once been. Realf had shown himself without recuperative powers; he economised, but inefficiently, and Reuben foresaw that the day would come when he would be forced to part with some of his land. He was in no immediate hurry for this, as he would be all the readier to spend his money in a few years' time, but occasionally he gave himself the treat of going up to the Grandturzel inclosure and inspecting it from the fence, planning exactly what he would do with it when it was his.

More than once Realf and Tilly saw him in the distance, a tall, sinister figure, haunting their northern boundaries.

"F?ather's after our land," said Tilly, and shuddered.