THREE:"Well, let's hope as he's found it worth while now as he's lost two wives and eight children," was the sage comment of old Vennal of Burntbarns.It was after ten o'clock when her father-in-law and his two silent boys climbed into their trap and started homewards over the clattering cobbles of Mermaid Street. In the trap the two silent boys found their tongues, and fell to discussing their brother Richard in awestruck voices. They whispered about his dinner, his wife, his hands, his eye-glasses, his voice, while old Dorrington picked his way up Playden Hill in the white starshine. Reuben heard them as if in a dream as he leaned forward over the reins, his eyes fixed on Capella, bright and cold above Bannister's Town. He had drunk more liberally and more variously than he had ever drunk in his life, but he carried his liquor well, and all[Pg 394] he was conscious of was a slight exaltation, a feeling of triumph, as if all these huddled woods, lightless farms, and cold winking stars were in some strange way his by conquest, the tokens of his honour. The wind lapped round him, baffing at his neckit sighed in the woods, and rocked them gently towards the east. In the south Orion hung above Stonelink, with Sirius at the end of his sword ... the constellation of the Ram was high....
