They talked farming all the way home, and it was a revelation to him how much the boy had picked up. He had no idea Eli was at all interested in it, had imagined, from his being sent to school, that he was destined for a clerk or something bookish. He had looked forward to fighting a losing battle, for John’s sake and Bosula’s sake, single-handed, to the end. Saw himself, a silver ancient, dropping dead at the plow tail and the triumphant bracken pouring over him like a sea. But now the prospect had changed. Here was a true Penhale coming back to tend the land of his sires. With young blood at his back they would yet save the place. He knew Eli, once he set his face forward, would never look back; his brain was too small to hold more than one idea. He gloated over the boy’s promising shoulders, thick neck and sturdy legs. He would root out the big bowlders as his father had done, swing an ax or scythe from cock-crow to owl-light without flag, toss a sick calf across his shoulders and stride for miles, be at once the master and lover of his land, the right husbandman. But of Ortho, the black gypsy son, Bohenna was not so sure. Nevertheless hope dawned afresh and he went home to his crib among the rocks singing, “I seen a ram at Hereford Fair” for the first time in six months. * * * * * Eli was back again a few days before Christmas, and on Christmas Eve Ortho appeared. There was nothing of the chastened prodigal about him; he rode into the yard on a showy chestnut gelding (borrowed from Pyramus), ragged as a scarecrow, but shouting and singing. He slapped Bohenna on the back, hugged Eli affectionately, pinned his mother against the door post and kissed her on both cheeks and her nose, chucked old Martha under the chin and even tossed a genial word at the half-wit Wany. With the exception of Eli, no one was particularly elated to see him back—they remembered him only as an unfailing fount of mischief—but from Ortho’s manner one would have concluded he was restoring the light of their lives. He did not give them time to close their front. They hardly knew he had arrived before he had embraced them all. The warmth of his greeting melted their restraint. Bohenna’s hairy face split athwart in a yellow-toothed grin, Martha broke into bird-like twitters, Wany blushed, and Teresa said weakly, “So you’re back.”