Meanwhile, the farm was doing well; indeed, it was almost back at its former glory. Having laid the foundations, Reuben could now think of expansion, and he engaged two more farm-hands.
He had quite changed the look of Boarzell. Instead of the swell and tumble of the heather, were now long stretches of chocolate furrows, where only the hedge mustard sometimes sprang mutinously, soon to be rooted up. Reuben, however, looked less on these than on the territories still unconquered. He would put his head on one side and contemplate the Moor from different angles, trying to size the rough patch at the top. He wondered how long it would be before it could all be his. He would have to work like a fiend if he was to do it in his lifetime. There was the Grandturzel inclosure, too.... Then he would go and whip up his men, and make them work nearly as hard as he worked himself, so that in the evening they would complain at the Cocks of "wot a tedious hard mäaster Mus' Backfield wur, surelye!"
One day Albert sent his father a message through Pete.
"He wanted me to tell you wot an unaccountable difference he sees in Boarzell now he's come back. He'd never have known it, 'tis so changed. All the new bit towards Doozes is justabout präaper."
Reuben said nothing, in spite of the entreaty in Pete's honest eyes, but his heart warmed towards his son. Albert had shown at last proper spirit; he had no doubt realised his baseness, and acknowledged that he had been a fool and villain to betray Odiam. Now he saw how mightily the farm prospered in spite of adversity, he praised its greatness, and no man could praise Odiam without winning a little of Reuben's goodwill. He softened towards the prodigal, and felt that he would like to see the boy—he still called him "the boy," though he was thirty-seven—and if he behaved penitently and humbly, forgive him before he died.
That evening he went up to Pete's room. The sound of voices came from it, one exceedingly loud, and it struck Reuben that "that hemmed Methody" was there. He opened the door and looked in. Albert lay propped up in the bed, his hands, wasted into claws, clasped in the attitude of prayer, his eyes protruding strangely above his sunken cheeks, where the skin was stretched on the bones. Pete knelt beside him, his eyes closed, his hands folded, like a child saying its prayers, and at the foot of the bed stood the Rev. Roger Ades, his face contorted with fervour, his arms waving in attitudes that were reminiscent of the boxing ring in spite of his efforts.
None of them saw or heard Reuben's entrance, and at that moment they all burst into a hymn:
"There's life in the crimson Fountain,
There's peace in the Blood of the Slain."