However, Europe was disobliging; corn prices hardly rose at all, and Reuben was driven to the unwelcome thought that the only hope of the British farmer was milk--at least, that was not likely ever to be imported from abroad. The year wore on. Kimberley and Ladysmith were relieved. Rye hung out its flags, and sang "Dolly Grey" louder than ever. Then Mafeking was saved, and a bonfire was lit up at Leasan House, in which a couple of barns and some stables were accidentally involved. Everyone wore penny medallion portraits of officers--Roberts and Baden-Powell were the favourites at Odiam, which nearly came to blows with Burntbarns over the rival merits of French. While Reuben himself bought a photograph of Kitchener in a red, white, and blue frame. Then suddenly an honour fell on Odiam. The War Office itself sent it a telegram. But the honour was taken sadly, for the telegram announced that Sergeant David Backfield had been killed in action at Laing's Nek. § 14. It was not the first time death had visited Reuben, but it was the first time death had touched him. His father's death, his mother's, George's, Albert's, had all somehow seemed much more distant than this very distant death in Africa. Even Naomi's had not impressed him so much with sorrow for her loss as sorrow for the inadequacy of her life. But David's death struck home. David and William were the only two children whom he had really loved. They were his hope, his future. Once again he tasted the agonies of bereaved fatherhood, with the added tincture of hopelessness. He would never again see David's brown, strong, merry face, hear his voice, build plans for him. For some days the paternal feeling was so strong that he craved for his boy quite apart from Odiam, just for himself. It had taken eighty years and his son's death to make a father of him. An added grief was the absence of a funeral. Reuben did not feel this as the relief it would have been to some. He had given handsome and expensive funerals to those not half so dear as this young man who had been hurried into his soldier's grave on the lonely veldt. In course of time William sent him a snapshot of the place, with its little wooden cross. Reuben dictated a tremendously long letter through Maude the dairy-woman, in which he said he wanted a marble head-stone put up, and "of Odiam, Sussex," added to the inscription. The neighbourhood pitied him in his loss. There was indeed something rather pathetic about this old man of eighty, who had lost nearly all his kith and kin, yet now tasted bereavement for the first time. They noticed that he lost some of the erectness which had distinguished him, the corners of his mouth drooped, and his hair, though persistently thick, passed from iron grey to a dusty white.