"My liege, I am leader of fifty thousand men."The boys were now sixteen and eighteen, fine, manly young fellows, working cheerfully on Odiam and rejoicing their father's heart. Reuben watched over them sometimes with an odd kind of anxiety��they were so satisfactory that he felt it could not last. He remembered that conversation he had overheard in the trap on the way home from Rye, and though nothing had happened since to remind him of it or cause him fresh alarm, he could never quite shake off the cold thrills it had given him.How horrible everything had been! How horrible everything was still, with that loggish, inanimate thing lying there, all that was left of Beautiful Harry. Reuben wondered if he would die. If so, he had killed him��he had ignored his own inexperience and played splashy tricks with his new land. But no��he had not killed him��it was Boarzell, claiming a victim in the signal-rite of its subjection. He remembered how that thirsty ground had drunk up Harry's blood. Perhaps it would drink up much more blood before he had done with it��perhaps it would one day drink up his blood.... A vague, a sudden, a ridiculous fear clutched his thoughts; for the first time he felt afraid of the thing he had set out to conquer��for the first time Boarzell was not just unfruitful soil, harsh heather clumps and gorse-roots��it was something personal, opposing, vindictive, blood-drinking.<000005>