ONE: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.Salvation! Salvation full and free!" TWO:"With whom hold ye, friends?""And I hope to God they'll have the wit to follow the rest of us. I'd like to see that old slave-driver left quite alone. Heavens! I could have strangled him yesterday��I should have, if I hadn't had this to look forward to."

ONE:Reuben's eyes swept the dim outlines of his farm��the yard, the barns, the oasts, the fields beyond, up to where his boundaries scarred the waste. It was all blurred and blanketed in the darkness, but his mind could see it in every detail. He saw the cow-stable empty except for the six cheap Suffolks which just supplied his household and one or two gentry with milk; he saw doors split and unhinged that he could not afford to mend, gaping roofs that he could not afford to retile, while the martins stole his thatch for their autumn broods; he saw his oat-harvest mostly straw, his hop-harvest gathered at a loss, his hay spoiled with sorrel; he saw himself short of labour, one man turned off, another run away; and he saw all the flints and shards and lime of Boarzell breaking his plough, choking his winter wheat, while on the lower ground runnels of clay made his corn sedgy, and everywhere the tough, wiry fibres of the gorse drank all the little there was of goodness out of the ground and scattered it from its blossoms in useless fragrance. TWO:"Odiam's doing splendid��you don't want no more."