TWO:At length one of the keepers was seized, who conducted Tyler and Holgrave to his cell.
TWO:A crash of thunder and a spit of lightning tore open the sky, and for a moment Reuben saw the slope of the Moor livid in the flash, and the crest of firs standing[Pg 225] against the split and tumbling clouds. The air rang, screamed, hissed, rushed, and rumbled. Reuben, hardly knowing what he did, had sprung to his feet."T?ake careshe might hear you."
TWO:Reuben was now alone at Odiam with his two small children and Harry. David and Bill, unlike their predecessors, did not start their career as farm-hands till well past babyhood. Reuben no longer economised in labourhe had nearly a dozen men in regular employ, to say nothing of casuals. Sometimes he thought regretfully of the stalwart sons who were to have worked for him, to have run the farm without any outside help ... but that dream belonged to bygone days, and he resolutely put it from him. After all, his posse of farm-hands was the envy of the neighbourhood; no one in Peasmarsh employed so many.
TWO:Where Ditch of Totease or Vennal of Burntbarns would have taken a couple of woodmen and a saw, Reuben took nothing but an axe and his bare arms. His muscles ached for this new carouse of exertion.