Eli was amazed and delighted. Did Ortho really mean what he said?
“Then—then you’re not going gypsying again?” he asked.
Ortho spat. “My Lord, no—done with that. It’s a dog’s life, kicked from common to heath, living on hedge-hogs, sleeping under bushes, never dry—mind you, I enjoyed it all—but I’ve had all I want. No, boy”—once more he hugged his brother to him—“I’m going to stop home long o’ thee—us’ll make our old place the best in the Hundred—in the Duchy—and be big rosy yeomen full of good beef and cider. . . . Eh, look at that!”
The sun had dipped. Cirrus dappled the afterglow with drifts of smoldering, crimson feathers. It was as though monster golden eagles were battling in the upper air, dropping showers of lustrous, blood-stained plumes. Away to the north the switch-backed tors rolled against the sky, wine-dark against pale primrose. Mist brimmed the valleys; dusk, empurpled, shrouded the hills. The primrose faded, a star outrider blinked boldly in the east, then the green eve suddenly quivered with the glint of a million million spear-heads—night’s silver cohorts advancing. So still was it that the brothers on the hilltop could plainly hear the babble and cluck of the hidden stream below them; the thump of young rabbits romping in near-by fields and the bark of a dog at Boskennel being answered by another dog at Trevider. From Bosula yard came the creak and bang of a door, the clank of a pail—Bohenna’s voice singing:
“I seen a ram at Hereford Fair,
The biggest gert ram I did ever behold.”
Ortho laughed and took up the familiar song, sent his pleasant, tuneful voice ringing out over the darkling valley:
“His fleece were that heavy it stretched to the ground,
His hoofs and his horns they was shodden wi’ gold.”
Below them sounded a gruff crow of mirth from Bohenna and the second verse: