THREE:He pictured Odiam chiefly as a great grain farm��though there might be more money in fruit or milk, these would be mere temporary profit-making concerns, means to an end; for glory and real permanent fortune lay in wheat. He was terribly anxious lest the Corn Laws should be repealed, a catastrophe which had threatened farming for several years. For the first time he began to take an interest in politics and follow the trend of public opinion. He could not read, so was forced to depend on Naomi to read him the newspaper he occasionally had three days old from Rye. FORE:But it was for other reasons that Reuben most wished that Harry would die. Harry was a false note, a discord in his now harmonious scheme. He was a continual reminder of the power of Boarzell, and would occasionally sweep Reuben's thoughts away from those fat corn-fields licking at the crest to that earliest little patch down by Totease, where the Moor had drunk up its first blood. He called himself a fool, but he could not help seeing something sinister and fateful in Harry, scraping tunelessly at his fiddle, or repeating over and over again some wandering echo from the outside world which had managed to reach his dungeoned brain. Reuben wished he would die, and so did the farm-boy who slept with him, and the dairy-woman who fed him at meals.At the distance of nearly a mile from Sudley Castle, and at about a quarter of a mile from the high road that led to Oxford, was a singular kind of quarry or cliff. Its elevation was considerable, and the portion of the hill visible from the road was covered with the heathy verdure which usually springs from such scanty soil; but on passing round to the other side, all the barren unsightly appearance of a half worked quarry presented itself. Huge masses of stone stood firmly as nature had formed them, while others, of a magnitude sufficient to awaken in the hardiest, a sense of danger, hung apparently by so slight a tenure, that a passing gust of wind, seemed only required to release their fragile hold. But the hill had stood thus unaltered during the remembrance of the oldest inhabitant of Winchcombe. Strange stories were whispered respecting this cliff, but as the honour of the house of Sudley, and that of another family equally noble, were concerned in the tale, little more than obscure hints were suffered to escape.

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