"Hold your tongue! Does anyone here think I'm going to have a Radical fur my son?--and a tedious lying traitor, too, wot helps his fäather's enemies, and busts up the purtiest election that wur ever fought at Rye. Do you say you didn't write those lousy verses wot have lost us everything?" "No--I döan't say it. I did write 'em. But it's all your fault that I did--so you've no right to miscall me." "My fault!"--Reuben's jaw dropped as he faced the upstart. "Yes. You've allus treated me lik a dog, and laughed at my writing and all I wanted to do. Then chaps came along as didn't laugh, and promised me all sorts o' things if I'd write fur them." "Wot sort o' things?" "Mr. Hedges, the Liberal agent, promised that if I'd write fur him, he'd git me work on a London paper, and I could mäake my fortune and be free of all this." "All wot?" "Odiam!" shrieked Albert. Reuben faced him with straight lips and dilated nostrils; the boy was now quivering with passion, hatred seemed to have purged him of terror. "Yes--Odiam!" he continued, clenching his fists--"that blasted farm of yourn wot's the curse of us all. Here we're made to work, and never given a penny fur our labour--we're treated worse than the lowest farm-hands, like dogs, we are. Robert stole money to git away, and can you wonder that when I see my chance I should täake it. I'm no Radical--I döan't care one way or t'other--but when the Radicals offered me money to write verses fur 'em, I wurn't going to say 'no.' They promised to mäake my fortun, and save me from you and your old farm, which I wish was in hell." "Stop your ranting and tell me how the hogs got you." "I met Mr. Hedges at the pub----" "Wur it you or him wot thought of the Scott's Float Gëate?" "I heard of it from old Pitcher down at Loose, and I töald Hedges. I justabout----" A terrific blow from Reuben cut him short. § 21. The rest of the family had gone to bed, though scarcely to sleep. Reuben had washed the blood and filth off his face, and had stripped to his shirt, but he felt too sick and restless to lie down. He sat at his window, staring out into the dark gulf of the night. His skin burned, his pulses throbbed, in his head was a buzzing and humming. "Wished my farm wur in hell, dud he? He cursed my farm, dud he? The young whelp!" He peered out into the blackness. Was that something he saw moving against the sky on the shoulder of Boarzell? It was too dark for him to make sure. Where had Albert gone? To his Radical friends, of course. They had offered to make his fortune--well, let them make it, and durn them! Two sons were gone now. Life was hitting him hard. But he would have no traitors in his camp. Albert was his son no longer. He bowed his head on the sill, and his throbbing brain revisualised the whole horrible day. He owed the humiliation and defeat of it all to Albert, who for the sake of money and a milk-and-water career, had betrayed Odiam's glory, and foully smirched its name.