TWO:Reuben was out of the house bare-headed, and running across the yard to the Totease meadows. He soon met a little knot of farm-hands coming towards him, with three rather guilty-looking young men.Albert slept in one of the attics with Jemmy and Pete. Reuben had no intention of meeting him till he had something to confront him with, for he was pretty sure that the boy would lie to him. He began turning the room topsy-turvy, and had soon found in a drawer a[Pg 186] heap of papers scrawled over with writing. It was unlucky that he could not read, for he could not even tell whether the handwriting were Albert'sthese might be some letters he had received. Suddenly, however, a word caught his eye which he had seen a hundred times on hoardings, letters, bills, and other documentsMacKinnon. He could trace it out quite clearly. What had Albert to do with MacKinnon? Reuben clenched the papers together in his fist, and went downstairs to the kitchen.
TWO:He started licking his forty acres into shape, with many inward vows that he would have the rest of them soon, he was hemmed if he didn't. He was on the high ground now, he could throw a stone into the clump of firs which still mocked his endeavours. The soil was all hard and flinty, matted with heather roots and the fibres of gorse. Reuben's men grumbled and cursed as the earth crumbled and rattled against their spades, which sometimes broke on the big flints and bits of limestone. They scoffed incredulously when old Beatup told them that the lower pastures and the Totease oatfields had once been like this.Rose could not read his mood; one day she would feel her husband had been alienated from her by his sorrow, another that his need of her was greater than ever. She herself carried a heavy heart, and in her mind a picture of the man who was "only looking in at the window." She seemed to see him standing there, with the moon[Pg 300] rising over his shoulder, while from behind him something in the garden, in the night, called ... and called.
