For some time after Naomi\'s death Reuben was sick with grief. Her going had been so cruel, so unexpected—and he could not forget how they had found her, her eyelashes wetted with tears.

He also missed her in the house—her soft pale face and gentle ways. He forgot the sallowness and the peevishness of later years, and pictured her always with creamy roseal skin and timid voice. He was the only one who missed her. Mrs. Backfield\'s softer feelings seemed to have been atrophied by hard work—she grew daily more and more like a machine; the children were too young to care much, and Harry was incapable of regret. However, the strange thing about Harry was that he did indeed seem to miss someone, but not Naomi. For the first time since little Fanny\'s death he began to ask for her, and search for her about the house—"Where\'s the pretty baby?—oh, save the pretty baby!" he would wail—"she\'s gone, she\'s gone—the pretty baby\'s gone."

Reuben, as was usual with him, tried to drown sorrow in hard work. He spent his whole day either in the yard or in the fields or out on Boarzell. He was digging a ditch round his new land, to let off the winter rain, and throughout the cool November damps he was on the Moor, watching the sunset\'s fiery glow behind the gorse, seeing the red clay squash and crumble[Pg 121] thickly under his spade—spouting out drops of blood. In time all this fire and blood brought him back into his old purpose. Gradually the lust of conquest drove away regret. He had no more cause for self-reproach than an officer who loses a good soldier in battle. It is the fortune of war. And Naomi had not died without accomplishing her work and giving him men to help him in the fight.

The young Backfields were beginning to grow into individualities. Albert, the eldest, was eight, and showed certain tokens of a wilful nature, which had not much chance where his father was conce............