THREE:The last piece of land had been exceptionally tough even for Boarzell. It was a high strip, running right across the Moor from the edge of the twenty-acre piece acquired in '67, over the high-road, to the borders of Doozes. The soil was amazingly variousit started in[Pg 267] the low grounds almost as clay, with runnels of red water in the irrigation ditches, then passing through a stratum of marl it became limish, grey and brittle, powdering under the spade. Reuben's ploughs tore over it, turning up earth of almost every consistency and colour, till the new ground looked like a smeared palette. Towards Doozes it became clay again, and here oats would grow, sedge-leaved and tulip-rooted, with puffy awns. On the crest was rubble, poor stuff where even the heather seemed to fight for existence."And since we talk of hanging," said Turner, "there is one" and he looked significantly at Holgrave"but, never mind; his time will come, Stephen!"
FORE:When the struggle on the lower slopes of Boarzell between the damp earth and the determined man had ended in the earth's sludgy victory and a pile of rotten straw which should have been the glory of the manthen Reuben had time to think of what was going on in the house. He sent for the doctornot Dr. Espinette, but a Cockney successor who boiled his instruments and washed his hands in carbolicand heard from him that Mrs. Backfield's existence was no longer justified. She could not expect to work again.
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