It was not the first time death had visited Reuben, but it was the first time death had touched him. His father\'s death, his mother\'s, George\'s, Albert\'s, had all somehow seemed much more distant than this very distant death in Africa. Even Naomi\'s had not impressed him so much with sorrow for her loss as sorrow for the inadequacy of her life.

But David\'s death struck home. David and William were the only two children whom he had really loved. They were his hope, his future. Once again he tasted the agonies of bereaved fatherhood, with the added tincture of hopelessness. He would never again see David\'s brown, strong, merry face, hear his voice, build plans for him. For some days the paternal feeling was so strong that he craved for his boy quite apart from Odiam, just for himself. It had taken eighty years and his son\'s death to make a father of him.

An added grief was the absence of a funeral. Reuben did not feel this as the relief it would have been to some. He had given handsome and expensive funerals to those not half so dear as this young man who had been hurried into his soldier\'s grave on the lonely veldt. In course of time William sent him a snapshot of the place, with its little wooden cross. Reuben dictated a tremendously long letter through Maude the dairy-woman, in which he said he wanted a marble head-stone put up, and "of Odiam, Sussex," added to the inscription.<............