During the next ten years the farm went forward by strides. Reuben bought seven more acres of Boarzell in \'59, and fourteen in \'60. He also bought a horse-rake, and threshed by machinery. He was now a topic in every public-house from Northiam to Rye. His success and the scant trouble he took to conciliate those about him had made him disliked. Unprosperous farmers[Pg 124] spoke windily of "spoiling his liddle game." Ditch and Ginner even suggested to Vennal that they should club together and buy thirty acres or so of the Moor themselves, just to spite him. However, money was too precious to throw away even on such an object, especially as everyone felt sure that Backfield would sooner or later "bust himself" in his dealings with Boarzell.

After all, he had only fifty-six acres out of a possible three hundred, and had not made much profit out of them, judging by the austerity of ways at Odiam. Horse-rakes and steam-threshers could not blind his neighbours to the absence of muslin curtains and butcher\'s meat. "And the way he\'s working them pore childer, too ... all of \'em hard at it from mornun till evenun, surelye ... enough to make their mother turn in her grave, pore girl ... not but wot she hadn\'t every reason to expect it, considering the way he treated her," etc. etc.

At Flightshot Manor comment was more enlightened.

"I can\'t understand, papa," said Anne Bardon, "how you can go on selling land to that odious Backfield."

"Well, my dear, he pays me good money for it, and I\'m in precious need of that just now."

"But in time the whole Moor will fall into his hands—see if it doesn\'t. And he\'s a Tory, a reactionary. It would be a dreadful thing for the parish if he became a big landowner."

Anne\'s politics were the most vigorous in the family.

"My dear, if anyone else would buy the Moor, I\'d be only too pleased to sell it to them. But so far there hasn\'t been a nibble. Backfield\'s the only man who has the temerity to think he could make anything out of a desert like Boarzell, and I must say I admire his pluc............