Chapter 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, m?aster," said Boorman.

Richard's mouth twisted in contemptuous silence—Handshut 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  fitses coming on un, and tried to git h?ame, pore souly."

"When did you find him?"

"Half an hour agone. He'd bin dead for hours, m?aster. 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."