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 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 neck--it 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.... Then suddenly his sons' voices floated up to him in his dream. "I wish I could be like Richard, Bill." "So do I--but I reckon we never shall." "Not if we stick to the farm. Did you notice that ring on his little finger?" "Yes, quite a plain one, but it looked justabout fine." "And he had a gold watch-chain across his waistcoat." "I reckon he's done well fur himself by running away." "Yes, if he'd stayed he'd never have married Miss Bardon and had his name in all the papers." "We'll never do anything fur ourselves if we stay at Odiam." "No--but we'll have to stay. Fäather will make us." "He couldn't make Richard stay." Reuben listened as if in a nightmare--the blood in his veins seemed to turn to ice. He could hardly believe his ears. "Richard's made his fortune by quitting Odiam. 'Tis a good place, but he'd never have done half so valiant for himself if he'd stayed." Reuben pulled himself together, and swinging round cuffed both speakers unaccustomedly. "Döan't let me hear another word of that hemmed nonsense. If you think as Richard's bettered himself by running away from Odiam, you're unaccountable mistaken. Wot's a dirty lawyer compared wud a farmer as farms three hundred acres, and owns 'em into the bargain? All my boys have busted and ruined them selves by running away--Richard's the only one that's done anything wotsumdever ... and if he's done well, there's one as has done better, and that's his fäather wot stayed at home." § 5.