These tricks were never unkind, for David and William were the most benevolent little boys. They saw life through a golden mist, it smelt of milk and apples, it was full of soft lowings and bleatings and cheepings, of gentle noses to stroke and little downy things to hold. For the first time since it became Reuben's, Odiam made children happy. The farm which had been a galley and a prison to those before them, was an enchanted land of adventure to these two. Old Beatup, who remembered earlier things, would sometimes smile when he saw them trotting hand in hand about the yard, playing long hours in the orchard, and now and then pleading as a special favour to be allowed to feed the chickens, or help fetch the cows home. He seemed to see the farm peopled by little ghosts who had never dared trot about aimlessly, or had time to play, and had fed the fowls and fetched the cows not as a treat and an adventure, but as a dreary part of the day's grind ... he reflected that "the mäaster had learned summat by the others, surelye." Of course, one reason why David and Billy were so free was because of the growing prosperity of the farm, which no longer made it necessary to save and scrape. But on the other hand, it was a fact that the mäaster had learned summat by the others. He was resolved that, come what might, he would keep these boys. They should not leave him like their brothers; and since harshness had failed to keep those at home, he would now try a slacker rule. He was growing old, and he wanted to think that at his death Odiam would pass into loyal and loving hands, he wanted to think of its great traditions being carried on in all their glory. Sometimes he would have terrible dreams of Odiam being divided at his death, split up into allotments and small-holdings, scrapped into building plots. Such dreams made him look with hungry tenderness at the two little figures trotting hand in hand about the orchard and the barns. § 2. It was about that time that the great Lewin case came on at the Old Bailey. The papers were full of it, and Reuben could not suppress a glow of pride when Maude the dairy-woman read out the name of Richard Backfield as junior counsel for the defence. But his pride was to be still further exalted. The senior counsel collapsed with some serious illness on the very eve of the trial, and Richard stepped into his shoes. The papers were now full of his name, it was on everyone's lips throughout the kingdom, and especially in the public-houses between Rye and the Kent border. Men stopped drinking at the Cocks when Reuben came in, and women ran down to their garden gates when he passed by. Reuben himself did not say much, but he now regularly took in a daily paper, and being able to recognise the name of Backfield in print, sat chasing the magic word through dark labyrinths of type, counting the number of its appearances and registering them on the back of his corn accounts.