TWO:The cry rose from the mass up at the stalls, as the big dark figure with flapping hat-brim suddenly sprang out of the dusk and ran to meet Mexico Bill. Reuben was an old man, and his arm had lost its cunning, but he carried a stout ash stick and the maniac saw no one but the women at the hedge. The next moment Reuben's stick had come against his forehead with a terrific crack, and he had tumbled head over heels into a gorse-bush."He's worked like the Old Un fur the last five year," said Dunn, the new man at Socknersh.
TWO:"How cud we, f?ather?"He was eighty. He suddenly realised that, after all, he was old. He did not carry himself as erectly as he had used; there were pains and stiffness in his limbs and rheumatic swellings in his joints. His hair was white, and his once lusty arms were now all shrivelled skin and sinew, with the ossified veins standing out hard and grey. He was what Harry was always calling himself"only a poor old man"a poor old man who had lost his son, whom cottage women pitied from their doorstepsand be hemmed to them, the sluts!
