Something thick and icy seemed to creep into his blood, and he gripped the edge of the pew, as he stared at Realf, sitting there so unconsciously, his damped and brushed hair gleaming ruddily in the light that poured through some saint's aureole. He must not let this youngster beat him.... Beat him?--the ice in his blood froze thicker--after all he had not done so very much during the twenty-six years he had toiled and struggled; he had won only a hundred acres of Boarzell--little more than Realf had to start with ... and Realf was only twenty-five. Caro and Tilly, sitting carefully so as not to crush their muslins, both their heads slewed round a little towards Realf, noticed how their father's throat was working, how hot flows of colour rushed up and ebbed away under the tan on his cheeks. For the first time Reuben was contemplating failure, looking that livid horror full in the face, seeing himself beaten, after all his toil and heartache, by a younger man. But the next moment he cast the coward feeling from him. His experience had given him immeasurable advantage over this babe. Realf who had never felt the sweat pouring like water down his tired body, who had never swooned asleep from sheer exhaustion, or lain awake all night from sheer anxiety, who had not sacrificed wife and children and friends and self to one dear, loved, darling ambition ... bah! what could he do against the man who had done all these things, and was prepared to go on doing them to the end? When the congregation rose to sing Reuben held his head proudly and his shoulders square. He felt himself a match for any youngster. § 3. That summer old Mrs. Backfield became completely bedridden. The gratefulness of sunshine to her old bones was counteracted by the clammy fogs that streamed up every night round the farm. It was an exceptionally wet and misty summer--a great deal of Reuben's wheat rotted in the ground, and he scarcely took any notice when Tilly announced one morning that grandmother was too ill to come downstairs. When the struggle on the lower slopes of Boarzell between the damp earth and the determined man had ended in the earth's sludgy victory and a pile of rotten straw which should have been the glory of the man--then Reuben had time to think of what was going on in the house. He sent for the doctor--not Dr. Espinette, but a Cockney successor who boiled his instruments and washed his hands in carbolic--and heard from him that Mrs. Backfield's existence was no longer justified. She could not expect to work again. Reuben was grieved, but not so much grieved as if she had been cut down in her strength--for a long time she had been pretty useless on the farm. He handed her over to the nursing of the girls, though they were too busy to do more for her than the barest necessities. Now and then he went up himself and sat by her bed, restlessly cracking his fingers, and fretting to be out again at his work.