The last piece of land had been exceptionally tough even for Boarzell. It was a high strip, running right across the Moor from the edge of the twenty-acre piece acquired in \'67, over the high-road, to the borders of Doozes. The soil was amazingly various—it started in[Pg 267] the low grounds almost as clay, with runnels of red water in the irrigation ditches, then passing through a stratum of marl it became limish, grey and brittle, powdering under the spade. Reuben\'s ploughs tore over it, turning up earth of almost every consistency and colour, till the new ground looked like a smeared palette. Towards Doozes it became clay again, and here oats would grow, sedge-leaved and tulip-rooted, with puffy awns. On the crest was rubble, poor stuff where even the heather seemed to fight for existence.

Reuben struggled untiringly—he tried manure as in his first enterprising days, and a horrible stink of guano told traffic on the road it was passing through Odiam territory. Spades and ploughshares and harrows scored and pulped the earth. Sometimes with breaking back and aching head, the sweat streaming over his skin, he would lift himself stiffly from the plough-handles, and shake his fist at the desert round him. He had never had such a tussle before, and put it down to the fact that he was now for the first time on the high ground, on the hard and sterile scab of the marl, where it seemed as if only gorse would grow. He felt as if now for the first time he was fighting against odds, his earlier struggles were tame compared with this.

Often in the evenings, when the exhausting work of the day was done, he would wander out on the Moor, seeking as usual rest on the field of his labours. The tuft of firs would grow black and featureless against the dimming sky, and stars would hang pale lamps above the fog, which smoked round Boarzell, veiling the fields, till it seemed as if he stood alone on some desert island, in the midst of a shoreless sea. All sounds would be muffled, lights and shadows would blur, and he would be alone with the fir-clump and the stars and the strong smells of his land.

He would wait there till the dew hung in pearls on his clothes and hair, and the damp chills of the night were[Pg 268] in his bones. Then he would creep down from the Moor, and go back into the warmth and love of the house—yet with this difference now, that he never quite forgot.

He would wake during the night after cruel dreams of Boarzell stripped of its tilth, relapsed into wildness; for a few agonised moments he would wonder if the dream were true, and if he had not indeed failed. Sometimes he had to get out of bed and steal to the window, to reassure himself with the sight of his diggings and fencings. Then a horrible thought would attack him, that though he had not yet actually failed, he was bound to fail soon, that his task was too much for him, and only one end possible. He would creep back into bed, and lie awake till dawn and the restarting of the wheel.

One comfort was that these evil summers had blighted Grandturzel too. Realf\'s fruit and grain had both done badly, and he had been unfortunate with his cows, two of which had died of garget. It was now that the characters of the two riva............