FORE:So now was it strange that clashing with his sorrow, and his regretful love for one who, if he had never truly loved him, had always treated him with generosity and kindness, there should be a soaring sense of freedom and relief?a consciousness of standing on the edge of a boundless plain after years of confinement within walls? For Reuben was master now. Odiam was hisand the future of Odiam. He could follow his own will, he could take up that challenge which Boarzell Moor had flung him five years ago, when he fought and was flogged because he loved the red gaping clay between the gorse-stumps.
FORE:Reuben had no sympathy with these fancies when they took his son out of hard-working common sense into idle-handed, wander-footed dreams, or when perhaps he found them scribbled on the back of his corn accounts. He did not spare the rod, but Albert had all the rather futile obstinacy of weak-willed people, and could be neither persuaded nor frightened out of his dreams.Naomi followed him out of the little crowd which had grouped round Harry, and they wandered into the Panorama tent to see the show. After having sat for half an hour on a crowded bench, in an atmosphere thick with foul tobacco and the smell of clothes long stored awaywatching "The Coronation of Queen Victoria" and "Scenery on the West Coast of Scotland" rumble slowly past with many creaksthey moved on to the sparring booth, where Buck Washington, now a little knotted and disabled by a bout of rheumatism, arranged scraps between the ploughboys of the neighbouring farms.