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You know it isn't because of that I look after Ishmael and treat him differently; it's because he was left to me as a charge. I want to make a fine thing of him and for him to make a fine thing of Cloom.... But that includes his overcoming this barrier between him and his family; it won't be complete till he and Archelaus can meet in friendship as brothers should, without a grudge or a fear.

For a moment Ishmael made no reply; it was the first time it had occurred to him it would be possible to leave Cloom, and though he knew that up to now he had not wanted to, yet he was not quite pleased that Killigrew should take it so for granted.

Cloom had undergone a wonderful regeneration, though at present it went only skin-deep, and if left to herself she would soon relapse into savagery.

That evening as supper was being eaten in the new dining-room at Cloom a merry supper enough, for all Annie's skeleton presence at one end of the table Archelaus walked in. It was the first time he had been over to Cloom since the night of the bush-beating, and it was the first time Ishmael had seen him since that glimpse in the light of a lantern in the wood.

When, to other natures, a struggle might have arisen between staying on at Cloom, carrying out his work there, and taking Blanche into the life she would have shared with him, the point had not even arisen for him. During the turmoil of mind and body that the break with her had left to him his victory over himself had never really been in doubt.

Ishmael staggered across the last field with his bucket of fuel, his lean little arms aching under its weight, but his mind singing the triumphant refrain: "The evening's coming, and I'm going to cry the Neck! I'm going to cry the Neck!" The last of the corn had been reaped in Cloom fields and all was ready for the ceremony of "Crying the Neck."

I can only tell you that even if the wish is wicked I hope with all my heart, and pray it too, that you may never be allowed to come home to tell your brother what it is in your heart to tell him. That the boy may never in his turn have a son to gratify you with the sight of your grandchild at Cloom. That this weapon you have forged against your brother may be under Providence to your own undoing.

"When I was very young," went on Ishmael after a pause, "I think I lived by the Spirit much more so than I can now, Da Boase. I seem to have gone dead, somehow," Boase nodded, but said nothing. "And then it was Cloom that meant life to me when I came back here and started in on it. Then it was love!" He spoke the word baldly, looking away from the Parson.

"She'm a fitty maid," muttered Archelaus. "A fitty maid! Listen to the great bufflehead! She's fitty enough but with nothing to her but the clothes on her back. You've no call to be leading a maid toall yet. S'pose you was ever master of Cloom, what would you be wanting with Jenifer Keast?" "Master o' Cloom! That's plum foolishness.

It was not that he was excited so much as that a deep content filled him; life seemed full of promise and even more worth living than he had thought it. The distrust which that news of Carminow's had engendered drifted to the back of his brain; he wandered through the streets, picturing the days to come at Cloom.