 Far from the Madding crowd, preface. In reprinting this story for a new edition I am reminded that it was in the chapters of Far from the Madding crowd as they appeared month by month in a popular magazine that I first ventured to adopt the word Wessex from the pages of early English history and give it a fictitious significance as the existing name of the district once included in that extinct kingdom. The series of novels are projected being mainly of the kind called local, they seem to require a territorial definition of some sort to lend unity to their scene. Seeing that the area of a single county did not afford a canvas large enough for this purpose, and that there were objections to an invented name, I disinterred the old one. The press and the public were kind enough to welcome the fanciful plan, and willingly joined me in the anachronism of imagining a Wessex population living under Queen Victoria, a modern Wessex of railways, the penny post, mowing and reaping machines, union workhouses, Lucifer matches, laborers who could read and write, and national school children. But I believe I am correct in stating that until the existence of this contemporaneous Wessex was announced in the present story in 1874, it had never been heard of, and that the expression a Wessex peasant or a Wessex custom would therefore have been taken to refer to nothing later in date than the Norman conquest. I did not anticipate that this application of the word to a modern use would extend outside the chapters of my own chronicles, but the name was soon taken up elsewhere as a local designation. The first to do so was the now defunct examiner, which, in the impression bearing the date July 15th, 1876, entitled one of its articles the Wessex laborer, the article turning out to be no dissertation on farming during the heptarchy, but on the modern peasants of the South West Counties, and his presentation in these stories. Since then the appellation which I had taught to reserve to the horizons and landscapes of a merely realistic dream country has become more and more popular as a practical definition, and the dream country has, by degrees, solidified into a utilitarian region to which people can go to, take a house in, and write to the papers from. But I ask all good and gentle readers to be so kind as to forget this, and to refuse steadfastly to believe that there are any inhabitants of a Victorian Wessex outside the pages of this and the companion volumes in which they were first discovered. Moreover, the village called Weatherbury, wherein the scenes of the present story of the series are for the most part laid, would perhaps be hardly discernible by the explorer without help in any existing place nowadays, though at a time comparatively recent at which the tale was written, a sufficient reality to meet the descriptions both of background and personages might have been traced easily enough. The church remains by great good fortune unrestored and intact, and a few of the old houses, but the ancient malt house which was formerly so characteristic of the parish has been pulled down these twenty years, also most of the attached and dormant cottages that were once life-holds. The game of prisoner's base, which not so long ago seemed to enjoy a perennial vitality in front of the worn-out stocks, may, so far as I can say, be entirely unknown to the rising generation of schoolboys there. The practice of divination by Bible and key, in the regarding of valentines as things of serious import, the shearing supper and the harvest-home have, too, nearly disappeared in the wake of the old houses, and with them, have gone, it has said, much of that love of fuddling to which the village at one time was notoriously prone. The change at the root of this has been the recent supplanting of the class of stationery cottagers who carried on the local traditions and humours by a population of more or less migratory labourers, which has led to a break of continuity in local history more fatal than any other thing to the preservation of legend, folklore, close inter-social relations, and eccentric individualities. For these the indispensable conditions of existence are attachment to the soil of one particular spot by generation after generation. CH. February 1895. When Farmer Oak smiled the corners of his mouth spread till they were within an unimportant distance of his ears. His eyes were reduced to chinks, and diverging wrinkles appeared round them, extending upon his countenance like the rays in a rudimentary sketch of the rising sun. His Christian name was Gabriel, and on working days he was a young man of sound judgment, easy motions, proper dress, and general good character. On Sundays he was a man of misty views, rather given to postponing, and hampered by his best clothes and umbrella. On the whole one who felt himself to occupy morally that vast middle-space of Laodicea neutrality, which lay between the Communion people of the parish, and the drunken section. That is, he went to church, but yawned privately by the time the congregation reached an Icy creed, and thought of what there would be for dinner when he meant to be listening to the sermon, or to state his character as it stood in the scale of public opinion. When his friends and critics were in tantrums he was considered rather a bad man. When they were pleased he was rather a good man. When there were neither he was a man whose moral colour was a kind of pepper-and-salt mixture. Since he lived six times in many working days as Sundays, Oak's appearance in his old clothes was most peculiarly his own, the mental picture formed by his neighbours in imagining him being always dressed in that way. He wore a low-crowned felt hat, spread out at the base by tight jamming upon the head for security in high winds, and a coat like Dr. Johnson's, his lower extremities being encased in ordinary leather leggings and boots emphatically large, affording to each foot a roomy apartment so constructed that any wearer might stand in a river all day long and know nothing of damp, their maker being a conscientious man who endeavored to compensate for any weakness in his cut by unstinted dimension and solidity. Mr. Oak carried about him by way of watch, what may be called a small silver clock. In other words it was a watch as to shape an intention and a small clock as to size. This instrument, being several years old at an Oak's grandfather, had the peculiarity of going either too fast or not at all. The smaller of its hands, too, occasionally slipped round on the pivot, and thus, though the minutes were told with precision, nobody could be quite certain of the hour they belonged to. The stopping peculiarity of his watch oak remedied by thumps and shakes, and he escaped any evil consequences from the other two defects by constant comparisons with and observations of the sun and stars, and by pressing his face close to the glass of his neighbour's windows, till he could discern the hour marked by the green-faced timekeepers within. It may be mentioned that Oak's fob being difficult of access by reason of its somewhat high situation in the waistband of his trousers, which also lay at a remote height under his waistcoat, the watch was, as a necessity, pulled out by throwing the body to one side, compressing the mouth and face to a mere mass of ruddy flesh on account of the exertion required, and drawing up the watch by its chain, like a bucket from a well. But some thoughtful persons, who had seen him walking across one of his fields on a certain December morning, sunny and exceedingly mild, might have regarded Gabriel Oak in other aspects than these. In his face one might notice that many of the hues and curves of youth had tarried on to manhood. There even remained in his remote a cranny some relics of the boy. His height and breadth would have been sufficient to make his presence imposing, had they been exhibited with due consideration. But there is a way some men have, rural and urban alike, for which the mind is more responsible than flesh and sinew. It is a way of curtailing their dimensions by their manner of showing them, and from a quiet modesty that would have become a vessel, which seems continually to impress upon him that he had no great claim on the world's room, Oak walked unassumingly, and with a faintly perceptible bend, yet distinct from a bowing of the shoulders. This may be said to be a defect in an individual if he depends for his valuation more upon his appearance than upon his capacity to wear well, which Oak did not. He had just reached the time of life at which young is ceasing to be the prefix of man in speaking of one. He was at the brightest period of masculine growth, for his intellect and his emotions were clearly separated. He had passed a time during which the influence of youth indiscriminately mingles him in the character of impulse, and he had not yet arrived at a stage wherein they become united again in the character of prejudice by the influence of a wife and family. In short he was twenty-eight and a bachelor. The field he was in this morning sloped to a ridge called Norcombe Hill. Through a spur of this hill ran the highway between Emminster and Chalk Newton. Casually glancing over the hedge Oak saw coming down the incline before him an ornamental spring wagon, painted yellow and gaily marked, drawn by two horses, a wagoner walking alongside, bearing a whip perpendicularly. The wagon was laden with household goods and window-plants, and on the apex of the whole saddle-woman, young and attractive. Gabriel had not beheld the sight for more than half a minute, when the vehicle was brought to a standstill just beneath his eyes. "'Tail-boarder, the wagon is gone, miss,' said the wagoner. "'Then I heard it fall,' said the girl, in a soft, though not particularly low voice. I heard a noise I could not account for when we were coming up the hill.' "'I'll come back.' "'Do,' she answered. The sensible horses stood perfectly still, and the wagoner's steps sank fainter and fainter in the distance. The girl on the summit of the load sat motionless, surrounded by tables and chairs with her legs upwards, backed by an oak-settle, and ornamented in front by pots of geraniums, myrtles, and cactuses, together with a caged canary, all probably from the windows of the house just vacated. There was also a cat in a willow basket, from the partly open lid of which she gazed with half-closed eyes, and affectionately surveyed the small birds around. The handsome girl waited for some time idly in her place, and the only sound heard in the stillness was the hopping of the canary, up and down the perches of its prison. Then she looked attentively downwards. It was not a the bird, not a cat. It was at an oblong package tied in paper and lying between them. She turned her head to learn as a wagoner were coming. He was not yet in sight, and her eyes crept back to the package, her thoughts seeming to run upon what was inside it. At length she drew the article into her lap, and untied the paper covering, a small swing-looking glass was disclosed, in which she proceeded to survey herself attentively. She parted her lips, and smiled. It was a fine morning, and the sun lighted up to a scarlet glow the crimson jacket she wore, and painted a soft luster upon her bright face and dark hair. The myrtles, geraniums, and cactuses packed round her were fresh and green, and at such a leafless season they invested the whole concern of horses, wagon, furniture, and girl, with a peculiar vernal charm. What possessed her to indulge in such a performance in the sight of the sparrows, blackbirds, and unperceived farmer, who were alone at spectators, whether the smile began as a fictitious one, to test her capacity in that art nobody knows? It ended certainly in a real smile. She blushed at herself, and seeing her reflection blush, blushed the more. The change from the customary spot on necessary occasion of such an act, from the dressing-hour in a bedroom, to a time of travelling out of doors, lent to the idle deed a novelty it did not intrinsically possess. The picture was a delicate one. Woman's prescriptive infirmity had stalked into the sunlight, which had clothed it in the freshness of an originality. A cynical inference was irresistible by Gabriel Oak as he regarded the scene, generous though he feign would have been. There was no necessity, whatever for her looking in the glass, she did not do just her hat, or pat her hair, or press a dimple into shape, or do one thing to signify that any such intention had been her motive in taking up the glass. She simply observed herself as a fair product of nature in the feminine kind. Her thoughts seemed to glide into far-off, though likely dramas, in which men would play a part, vistas of probable triumphs, the smiles being of a phase suggesting that hearts were imagined as lost and won. Still, this was but conjecture, and the whole series of actions was so idly put forth as to make it rash to assert that intention had any part in them at all. The wagoner's steps were heard returning. She put the glass in the paper, and the hole again into its place. When the wagon had passed on, Gabriel withdrew from his point of a spile, and descended into the road, followed the vehicle to the turnpike gate some way beyond the bottom of the hill, where the object of his contemplation now halted for the payment of toll. About twenty steps still remained between him and the gate, when he heard a dispute. It was a difference concerning two pence between the persons with the wagon and the man at the toll-bar. Mrs. His niece is upon the top of the things, and she says that that's enough to revover ye great miser, and she won't pay any more. These were the wagoner's words. Very well, then Mrs. His niece can't pass, said the turnpike-keeper, closing the gate. Oak looked from one to the other of the disputants, and fell into a reverie. There was something in the tone of two pence remarkably insignificant. The three pence had as definite value as money, it was an appreciable infringement on the day's wages, and as such a higgling matter. He looked up two pence. Here, he said, stepping forward and handing two pence to the gatekeeper, let the young woman pass. He looked up at her then, she heard his words, and looked down. Gabriel's features adhered throughout their form so exactly to the middle-line between the beauty of St. John, and the ugliness of Judas Iscariot as represented in a window of the church he attended, that not a single liniment could be selected and called worthy, either of distinction or not variety. The red-jacketed and dark-haired maiden seemed to think so too, for she carelessly glanced over him and told her man to drive on. She might have looked her thanks to Gabriel on a minute scale, but she did not speak them. More probably she felt none, for, in gaining her a passage, he had lost her her point, and we know how women take a favour of that kind. The gatekeeper surveyed the retreating vehicle. At a handsome maid, he said to Oak, But she has her faults, said Gabriel. True farmer! And the greatest of them all is, well, what it is always. Beating people down, I to sow, Oh, no! What then? Gabriel, perhaps a little peaked by the company travellers indifference, glanced back to where he had witnessed her performance over the hedge, and said, Vanity! End of chapter 1 Far from the madding crowd, chapter 2. Night, the flock, an interior, another interior. It was nearly midnight, on the eve of St. Thomas's, the shortest day in the year. A desolating wind wandered from the north over the hill where on Oak had watched the yellow wagon and its occupant in the sunshine of a few days earlier. Norcom Hill, not far from lonely, taller down, was one of the spots which suggest to a passer by that he is in the presence of a shape approaching the indestructible, as nearly as any to be found on earth. It was a featureless convexity of chalk and soil, an ordinary specimen of those smoothly outlined protuberances of the globe which may remain undisturbed on some great day of confusion when far grander heights and dizzy granite precipices topple down. The hill was covered on its northern side by an ancient and decaying plantation of beaches, whose upper verge formed a lion over the crest, fringing its arched curve against the sky like a mane. Night these trees sheltered the southern slope from the keenest blasts, which smote the wood and floundered through it with a sound as of grumbling, or gushed over its crowning boughs in a weakened moan. The dry leaves in the ditch simmered and boiled in the same breezes, a tongue of air occasionally ferreting out a few, and sending them spinning across the grass. A group or two of the latest in date amongst the dead multitude had remained till this very mid-winter time on the twigs which bore them, and in falling rattled against the trunks with smart taps. Between this half-wooded, half-naked hill, and a vague still horizon that it somewhat indistinctly commanded, was a mysterious sheet of fathomless shade, the sounds from which suggested that what it concealed bore some reduced resemblance to features here. The thin grasses, more or less coating the hill, were touched by the wind in breezes of differing powers, and almost of differing natures, one rubbing the blades heavily, another raking them piercingly, another brushing them like a soft broom. The instinctive act of humankind was to stand and listen, and learn how the trees on the right and the trees on the left wailed or chanted to each other in the regular antiphanies of a cathedral choir, how hedges and other shapes to leeward then caught the note, lowering it to the tenderest sob, and how the hurrying gust then plunged into the south to be heard no more. The sky was clear, remarkably clear, and the twinkling of all the stars seemed to be but throbs of one body, timed by common pulse. The north star was directly in the wind's eye, and since evening the bear had swung round it outwardly to the east, till he was now at a right angle with the meridian. A difference in colour in the stars, often our red odd then seen in England, was really perceptible here. The sovereign brilliancy of Sirius pierced the eye with his steely glitter. The star called Capella was yellow, Aldebaran and Betelgeuse shone with a fiery red. To persons standing alone on a hill during a clear midnight such as this, the role of the world eastward is almost a palpable movement. The sensation may be caused by the panoramic glide of the stars past earthly objects, which is perceptible in a few minutes of stillness, or by the better outlook upon space at a hill affords, or by the wind, or by the solitude, but whatever be its origin, the impression of riding along is vivid and abiding. The poetry of motion is a phrase much in use, and to enjoy the epic form of that gratification it is necessary to stand on a hill at a small hour of the night, and having first expanded with a sense of difference from the mass of civilised mankind who are dream-wrapped and disregardful of all such proceedings at this time, long and quietly watch your stately progress through the stars. After such an octurnal reconnoiter it is hard to get back to earth, and to believe that the consciousness of such majestic speeding is derived from a tiny human frame. Suddenly an unexpected series of sounds began to be heard in this place up against the sky. They had a clearness which was to be found nowhere in the wind, and a sequence which was to be found nowhere in nature. They were the notes of Farmer Oak's flute. The tune was not floating unhindered into the open air, it seemed muffled in some way, and was altogether too curtailed in power to spread high or wide. It came from the direction of a small dark object under the plantation hedge, a shepherd's hut, now presenting an outline to which an uninitiated person might have been puzzled to attach either meaning or use. The image as a whole was that of a small Noah's Ark on a small ararat, allowing the traditionary outlines and general form of the Ark which are followed by toy-makers, and by these means are established in men's imaginations among their firmest, because earliest impressions, to pass as an approximate pattern. The hut stood on little wheels which raised its floor about a foot from the ground. Such shepherd's huts are dragged into the fields when the lambing season comes on to shelter the shepherd in his enforced nightly attendance. It was only latterly that people had begun to call Gabriel Farmer Oak. In the twelve months preceding this time he had been enabled by sustained efforts of industry and chronic good spirits to lease the small sheep-farm of which Norcombe Hill was a portion, and stock it with two hundred sheep. Previously he had been a bailiff for a short time, and earlier still a shepherd only, having from his childhood assisted his father in tending the flocks of large proprietors till old Gabriel sank to his rest. This venture, unaided and alone, into the paths of farming as master and not as man, with an advance of sheep not yet paid for, was a critical juncture with Gabriel Oak, and he recognised his position clearly. The first movement in his new progress was the lambing of his youth, and sheep having been his speciality from his youth, he wisely refrained from deputing the task of tending them at this season to a harrowing or a novice. The wind continued to beat about the corners of the hut, but the flute playing ceased. A rectangular space of light appeared in the side of the hut, and, in the opening, the outline of Farmer Oak's figure. He carried a lantern in his hand, and closing the door behind him, came forward and busied himself about this knuck of the field for nearly twenty minutes, the lantern light appearing and disappearing here and there, and brightening him or darkening him, as he stood before or behind it. Oak's motions, though they had a quiet energy, were slow, and their deliberateness accorded well with his occupation. Fitness being the basis of beauty, nobody could have denied that his steady swings and turns in and about the flock had elements of grace. Yet although, if occasion demanded, he could do or think a thing with as mercurial a dash as can the men of towns who are more to the manner born. His special power, morally, physically, and mentally, was static, owing little or nothing to momentum as a rule. A close examination of the ground hereabout, even by the one starlight only, revealed how a portion of what would have been casually called a wild slope had been appropriated by Farmer Oak for his great purpose this winter. Detached hurdles, attached with straw, were stuck into the ground at various scattered points, amid and under which the whitish forms of his meek use moved and rustled. The ring of the sheep-bell, which had been silent during his absence, recommenced, in tones that had more mellowness than clearness, owing to an increasing growth of surrounding wool. This continued to Oak withdrew again from the flock. He returned to the hut, bringing in his arms a newborn lamb consisting of four legs large enough for a full-grown sheep, united by a seemingly inconsiderable membrane, about half the substance of the legs collectively which constituted the animal's entire body just at present. The little speck of life he placed on a wisp of hay before the small stove, where a can of milk was simmering. Oak extinguished the lantern by blowing into it, and then pinching the snuff. The cot being lighted by a candle suspended by a twisted wire. A rather hard couch formed of a few corn sacks thrown carelessly down, covered half the floor of this little habitation, and here the young man stretched himself along, loosened his wool and cravat, and closed his eyes. In about the time a person nonaccustomed to bodily labour would have decided upon which side to lie, farmer Oak was asleep. The inside of the hut, as it now presented itself, was cosy and alluring, and the scarlet handful of fire in addition to the candle, reflecting its own genial colour upon whatever it could reach, flung associations of enjoyment, even over utensils and tools. In the corners stood the sheep-croc, and along a shelf, at one side, were ranged bottles and canisters of the simple preparations pertaining to ovine surgery and physique, spirits of wine, turpentine, tar, magnesium, ginger, and castor oil being the chief. On a triangular shelf across the corner stood bread, bacon, cheese, and a cup of ale or cider, which was supplied from a flagon beneath. Beside the provisions lay the flute, whose notes had lately been called forth by the lonely watcher to beguile a tedious hour. The house was ventilated by two round holes, like the lights of a ship's cabin, with wood-slides. The lamb revived by the warmth began to bleed, and the sound entered Gabriel's ears and brain with an instant meaning, as expected sounds well. Passing from the profoundest sleep to the most alert wakefulness, with the same ease that had accompanied the reverse operation, he looked at his watch, found that the hour hand had shifted again, put on his hat, took the lamb in his arms, and carried it into the darkness. After placing the little creature with its mother, he stood and carefully examined the sky, to ascertain the time of night from the altitude of the stars. The dog-star and Aldebaran, pointing to the restless Pleiades, were half way up the southern sky, and between them hung Orion, which gorgeous consolation never burnt more vividly than now, as it soared forth above the rim of the landscape. Castor and Pollo, with their quiet shine, were almost on the meridian. The barren and gloomy square of Pegasus was creeping round to the north-west, far away through the plantation Vega, sparkled like a lamp suspended amid the leafless trees, and Cassiopeia's chair stood daintily poised on the uppermost bowels. "'One o'clock,' said Gabriel. Being a man not without a frequent consciousness that there was some charm in this life he led, he stood still after looking at the sky as a useful instrument, and regarded it in an appreciative spirit, as a work of art superlatively beautiful. For a moment he seemed impressed with the speaking loneliness of the sea, or rather with the complete abstraction from all its compass of the sights and sounds of man. Human shapes, interferences, troubles and joys were all as if they were not, and there seemed to be on the shaded hemisphere of the globe no sentient being save himself. He could fancy them all gone round to the sunny side. Occupied thus with eyes stretched afar, Oak gradually perceived that what he had previously taken to be a star low down behind the outskirts of the plantation was in reality no such thing. It was an artificial light almost close at hand. To find themselves utterly alone at night where a company is desirable and expected makes some people fearful. For a case more trying by far to the nerves is to discover some mysterious companionship when intuition, sensation, memory, analogy, testimony, probability, induction, every kind of evidence in a logician's list have united to persuade consciousness that it is quite an isolation. Farmer Oak went towards the plantation and pushed through its lower bowels to the windy side. A dim mass under the slope reminded him that a shed occupied a place here, the site being a cutting into the slope of the hill, so that at its back part of the roof was almost level with the ground. In front it was formed of boards nailed to posts and covered with tar as a preservative. Through crevices in the roof and side spread streaks and dots of light, a combination of which made the radiance that had attracted him. Oak stepped up behind where leaning down upon the roof and putting his eye close to a hole he could see into the interior clearly. The place contained two women and two cows. By the side of the latter a steaming bran mash stood in a bucket. One of the women was past middle age. Her companion was apparently young and graceful. He had formed no decided opinion upon her looks, her position being almost beneath his eye, so that he saw her in a bird's eye view, as Milton Satan first saw Paradise. She wore no bonnet or hat but had enveloped herself in a large cloak which was carelessly flung over her head as a covering. There! Now we'll go home," said the elder of the two, resting her knuckles upon her hips and looking at her goings-on as a whole. I do hope Daisy will fetch round again now. I've never been more frightened in my life, but I don't mind breaking my rest if she recovers. The young woman, whose eyelids were apparently inclined to fall together on the smallest provocation of silence, yawned without parting her lips to any inconvenient extent, whereupon Gabriel caught the infection and slightly yawned in sympathy. I wish we were rich enough to pay a man to do these things, she said. As we are not, we must do them ourselves," said the other, for you must help me if you stay. Well, my hat is gone, however. Continued the younger, it went over the hedge, I think. What the idea of such a slight wind catching it? The cow standing erect was of the Devon breed, and was encased in a tight warm hide of rich Indian red, as absolutely uniform from eyes to tail as if the animal had been dipped in a dye of that colour, her long back being mathematically level. The other was spotted gray and white. Beside her oak now noticed a little calf about a day old, looking idiotically at the two women, which showed that it had not long been accustomed to the phenomenon of eyesight, and often turning to the lantern which had apparently mistook for the moon, inherited instinct having, as yet, had little time for correction by experience. Between the sheep and the cows Lucina had been busy on Norcom Hill lately. I think we are better sent for some oatmeal, said the elder woman. There is no more bran. Yes, aunt, I'll ride over for it as soon as it is light. But there no side saddle. I can ride on the other, trust me. Oak, upon hearing these remarks, became more curious to observe her features, but this prospect being denied him by the hooding effect of the cloak, and by his aerial position, he felt himself drawing upon his fancy for their details. In making even horizontal and clear inspections, we colour and mould according to the wants within us whatever our eyes bring in. Had Gabriel been able, from the first, to get a distinct view of our countenance, his estimate of it, as very handsome or slightly so, would have been, as his soul required, a divinity at the moment, or was ready supplied with one. Having for some time known the want of a satisfactory form to fill an increasing void within him, his position moreover affording the widest scope for his fancy, he painted her a beauty. By one of those whimsical coincidences in which nature, like a busy mother, seems to spare a moment from her unremitting labours to turn and make her children smile, the girl now dropped the cloak, and forth tumbled ropes of black hair over a red jacket. Oak knew her instantly as the heroine of the yellow wagon, myrtles and looking-glass, prosely as the woman who owed him two pence. They placed the calf beside his mother again, took up the lantern, and went out. The light sinking down the hill till it was no more than a nebula. Gabriel Oak returned to his flock. 2 A girl on horseback, conversation. The sluggish day began to break. Even his position terrestrially is one of the elements of a new interest, and for no particular reason save that the incident of the night had occurred there, Oak went again into the plantation. Lingering and musing here he heard the steps of a horse at the foot of the hill, and soon there appeared in view an all-burned pony with a girl on its back, ascending by the path leading past the cattle shed. She was the young woman of the night before. Gabriel instantly thought of the hat she had mentioned as having lost in the wind, possibly she had come to look for it. He hastily scanned the ditch, and after walking about ten yards along it, found the hat among the leaves. Gabriel took it in his hand and returned to his hut. Here he ensconced himself, and peeped through the loophole in the direction of the rider's approach. She came up and looked around, then on the other side of the hedge. Gabriel was about to advance and restore the missing article, when an unexpected performance induced him to suspend the action for the present. The path after passing the cow shed bisected the plantation. It was not a bridal path merely a pedestrian's track, and the boughs spread horizontally at a height not greater than seven feet above the ground, which made it impossible to ride erect beneath them. The girl, who wore an old riding-habit, looked around for a moment, as if to assure herself that all humanity was out of view. Then dexterously dropped backwards flat upon the pony's back, her head over its tail, her feet against its shoulders, and her eyes to the sky. The rapidity of her glide into disposition was that of a king-fisher, its noiselessness that of a hawk. His eyes had scarcely been able to follow her. The tall, lank pony seemed used to such doings, and ambled along unconcerned. Thus she passed under the level boughs. The performer seemed quite at home anywhere between a horse's head and its tail, and the necessity for this abnormal attitude having ceased with the passage of the plantation. She began to adopt another, even more obviously convenient than the first. She had no side-saddle, and it was very apparent that a firm seat upon the smooth letter beneath her was unattainable sideways, springing to her accustomed perpendicular like a boat sapling. And satisfying herself that nobody was in sight, she seated herself in the manner demanded by the saddle, though hardly expected of the woman, and trotted off in the direction of Juneel Mail. The hawk was amused, perhaps a little astonished, and hanging up the hat and his hut went again among his ews. An hour passed the girl returned, properly seated now, with a bag of bran in front of her. On nearing the cattle-shed she was met by a boy bringing a milking-pail, who held the reins of the pony whilst she slid off. The boy led away the horse, leaving the pail with the young woman. Soon soft spurts alternating with loud spurts came in regular succession from within the shed, the obvious sounds of a person milking a cow. Gabriel took the lost hat in his hand, and waited beside the patch he would follow in leaving the hill. She came, the pail in one hand, hanging against her knee. The left arm was extended as a balance, enough of it being shown bare to make oak wish that the event had happened in the summer when the hole would have been revealed. There was a bright air and manner about her now, by which she seemed to imply that the desirability of her existence could not be questioned, and this rather saucy assumption failed in being offensive because a beholder felt it to be, upon the hole, true. Like exceptional emphasis in the tone of a genius, that which would have made mediocrity ridiculous was in addition to recognized power, it was with some surprise that she saw Gabriel's face rising like the moon behind the hedge. The adjustment of the farmer's hazy conceptions of her charms to the portrait of herself she now presented him with was less a diminution than a difference. The starting point selected by the judgment was her height. She seemed tall, but the pail was a small one and the hedge diminutive, hence making allowance for error by comparison with these she could have been not above the height to be chosen by women as best. All features of consequence were severe and regular. It may have been observed by persons who go about the shires with eyes for beauty, that an English woman, a classically formed face, is seldom found to be united with a figure of the same pattern, the highly finished features being generally too large for the remainder of the frame, that a graceful and proportionate figure of eight heads usually goes off into random facial curves. Without throwing an impfiant tissue over a milkmaid, let it be said that here criticism checked itself as out of place and looked at her proportions with a long consciousness of pleasure. From the contours of her figure in its upper part she must have had a beautiful neck and shoulders, but since her infancy nobody had ever seen them. Had she been put into a low dress she would have run and thrust her head into a bush. Yet she was not a shy girl by any means. It was merely her instinct to draw the line dividing the scene from the unseen, higher than they do in towns. That the girl's thoughts hovered about her face and form as soon as she caught Oak's eye conning the same page was natural and almost certain. The self-consciousness shown would have been vanity if a little more pronounced, a dignity if a little less. Rays of male vision seemed to have a tickling effect upon virgin faces in rural districts. She brushed hers with her hand, as if Gabriel had been irritating its pink surface by actual touch, and the free air of her previous movements was reduced at the same time to a chastened face of itself. Yet it was the man who blushed, the maid not at all. I found a hat, said Oak. It is mine, she said, and from a sense of proportion kept down to a small smile and inclination to laugh distinctly. It flew away last night. One o'clock this morning. Well, it was. She was surprised. How did you know? She said. I was here. You are Farmer Oak, are you not? That, or thereabouts, I have lately come to this place. A large farm, she inquired casting her eyes round and swinging back her hair, which was black in the shaded hollows of its mass, but it being now an hour past sunrise the rays touched its prominent curves with the colour of their own. No, not large, about a hundred. Then speaking of farms the word acres is omitted by the natives by analogy to such old expressions as a stag of ten. I wanted my hat this morning, she went on. I had to ride to Chunel Mill. Yes, you had. How do you know? They saw you. Where? She inquired, a misgiving bringing every muscle of her lineaments and framed to a standstill. Here, going through the plantation and all down the hill, said Farmer Oak with an aspect excessively knowing with regard to some matter in his mind, as he gazed at a remote point in the direction named, and then turned back to meet his colloquist's eyes. A perception caused him to withdraw his own eyes from hers as suddenly as if he had been caught in a teft. Recollection of the strange antics she had indulged in when passing through the trees was succeeded in the girl by a nettle palpitation, and that by a hot face. It was a time to see a woman reddened who was not given to reddening as a rule, not a point in the milkmaid but was of the deepest rose-colour. From the maiden's blush, through all varieties of the province, down to it the crimson Tuscany, the countenance of Oak's acquaintance quickly graduated, whereupon he, in considerateness, turned away his head. The sympathetic man still looked the other way, and wondered when she would recover coolness sufficient to justify him in facing her again. He heard what seemed to be the flitting of a dead leaf upon the breeze, and looked. She had gone away. With an air between that of tragedy and comedy, Gabriel returned to his work. Five mornings and evenings passed, the young woman came regularly to milk the healthy cow or to attend the sick one, but never allowed her vision to stray in the direction of Oak's person. His want of tact had deeply offended her, not by seeing what he could not help, but by letting her know that he had seen it. For as without law there is no sin, without eyes there is no indecorum, and she appeared to feel that Gabriel's aspire had made her an indecorous woman without her own connivance. It was food for great regret with him. It was also a contra-tom, which touched into life a latent heat he had experienced in that direction. The acquaintanceship might, however, have ended in a slow forgetting, but for an incident which occurred at the end of the same week. One afternoon it began to freeze, and the frost increased with evening, which drew on like a stealthy tightening of bonds. It was a time when in cottages the breadth of the sleepers freezes to the sheets. When round the drawing-room fire of a thick-walled mansion, the sitter's backs are cold, even whilst their faces are all aglow. Only a small bird went to bed supprelous that night among the bear-bows. As the milking-hour drew near, Oak kept his usual watch upon the couch-head. At last he felt cold, and shaking an extra quantity of bedding around the yearling-yues, he entered the hut and heaped more fuel upon the stove. The wind came in at the bottom of the door, and to prevent it Oak laid a sack there, and wheeled a cot round a little more to the south. The wind spouted in at a ventilating-hole, of which there was one at each side of the hut. Gabriel had always known that when the fire was lighted and the door closed one of these must be kept open, that chosen always being on the side away from the wind. Closing the slide to windward he turned to open the other. None second thoughts the farmer considered that he would first sit down, leaving both closed for a minute or two till the temperature of the hut was a little raised. He sat down. His head began to ache in an unwanted manner, and fancying himself weary by reason of the broken rests of the preceding nights, Oak decided to get up, open the slide, and then allow himself to fall asleep. He fell asleep, however, without having performed a necessary preliminary. How long he remained unconscious Gabriel never knew. During the first stages of his return to perception peculiar deeds seemed to be in course of enactment. His dog was howling, his head was aching fearfully, somebody was pulling him about, hands were loosening his neck a-chief. On opening his eyes he found that evening had sunk to dusk in a strange manner of unexpectedness. The young girl with the remarkably pleasant lips and white teeth was beside him. More than this, astonishingly more, his head was upon her lap, his face and neck were disagreeably wet, and her fingers were unbuttoning his collar. Never is the matter," said Oak vacantly. She seemed to experience mirth but of too insignificant a kind to start enjoyment. Nothing now, she answered, since you were not dead, it is a wonder you were not suffocated in this hut of yours. Ah, the hut, murmured Gabriel, I gave ten pounds for that hut, but I'll sell it, and sit under attached turtles that they did in old times, and curl up to sleep in a lock of straw. It played me nearly the same trick the other day. Gabriel, by way of emphasis, brought down his fist upon the floor. It was not exactly the fault of the hut. She observed in a tone which showed her to be that novelty among women, one who finished a thought before beginning the sentence which was to convey it. You should, I think, have considered, and not have been so foolish as to leave the slides closed. Yes, I suppose I should, said Oak, absently. He was endeavouring to catch and appreciate the sensation of being thus with her, his head upon her dress, before the event passed on into the heap of bygone things. He wished she knew his impressions, but he would as soon have thought of carrying an odour in a net as of attempting to convey the intangibilities of his feelings in the coarse meshes of language. So he remained silent. She made him sit up, and then Oak began wiping his face and shaking himself like a Samson. How can I thank thee? He said at last, gratefully, some of the natural lusty red having returned to his face. Oh, never mind that, said the girl, smiling, and allowing her smile to hold good for Gabriel's next remark, whatever that might prove to be. How did you find me? I heard your dog howling and scratching at the door of the hut when I came to the milking. It was so lucky, Daisy's milking is almost over for the season, and I shall not come here after this week or the next. The dog saw me, and jumped over to me, and laid hold of my skirt. I came across, and looked round the hut, the very first thing to see if the slides were closed. My uncle has a hut like this one, and I have heard him tell his shepherd not to go to sleep without leaving a slide open. I opened the door, and there you were, like dead. I threw the milk over you, as there was no water, forgetting it was warm and no use. I wondered if I should have died, said Gabriel, in a low voice, which was rather meant to travel back to himself than to her. Oh, no! the girl replied. She seemed to prefer a less tragic probability, to have saved the man from death-involved talk that should harmonize with the dignity of such a deed, and she shunned it. I believe you saved my life, Miss. I don't know your name. I know your aunts, but not yours. I would just assume, not tell it. Whether not. There is no reason, either, why I should, as you probably will never have much to do with me. Still, I should like to know. You can inquire at my aunts. She will tell you. My name is Gabriel Oak. And mine isn't. You seem fond of yours, and speaking it so decisively, Gabriel Oak. You see, it is the only one I shall ever have, and it must make the most of it. I always think mine sounds odd and disagreeable. I should think you might soon get a new one. And, actually, how many opinions you keep about you concerning other people, Gabriel Oak? Well, Miss, excuse the words. I thought you would like them. But I can't match you, I know, in mapping out my mind upon my tongue. I never was very clever in me inside. But I thank you. Come, give me your hand. She hesitated, somewhat disconcerted at Oak's old fashion-derness conclusion to a dialogue lightly carried on. Very well, she said, and gave him her hand, compressing her lips to a demure impassivity. He held it but an instant, and in his fear of being too demonstrative, swerved to the opposite extreme, touching her fingers with the lightness of a small-hearted person. I am sorry, he said, the instant after. What for? Letting your hand go so quick. You may have it again, if you like. There it is. She gave him her hand again. Oak held it longer this time, indeed curiously long. How soft it is, being wintertime, too, not chapped or rough or anything, he said. There, that is long enough, she said, though without pulling it away. But I suppose you were thinking you would like to kiss it. You may, if you want to. I wasn't thinking of any such thing. Said Gabriel simply. But I will. That you won't, she snatched back her hand. Gabriel felt himself guilty of another one of tact. Now find out my name, she said teasingly, and withdrew. End of Chapter 3. Far from the Madding crowd, Chapter 4. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Tyge Hines. Far from the Madding crowd, by Thomas Hardy, Chapter 4. Gabriel's Resolve. The Visit. The Mistake. The only superiority in women that is tolerable to the rival sex is, as a rule, that of the unconscious kind, but a superiority which recognises itself may sometimes please by suggesting possibilities of capture to the subordinated man. This well-favoured and comely girl soon made appreciable inroads upon the emotional constitution of young farmer Oak. Love being an extremely exacting user, a sense of exorbitant profit spiritually by an exchange of hearts being at the bottom of pure passions, as that of exorbitant profit bodily or material is at the bottom of those of lower atmosphere. Every morning Oak's feelings were as sensitive as the money market in calculations upon his chances. His dog waited for his meals in a way so like that in which Oak waited for the girl's presence that the farmer was quite struck with the resemblance, felt it lowering, and would not look at the dog. However, he continued to watch through the hedge for her regular coming, and thus his sentiments towards her were deepened without any corresponding effect being produced upon herself. Oak had nothing finished and ready to say as yet, and not been able to frame love phrases which end where they begin, passionate tales full of sound and fury signifying nothing. He said no word at all. By making inquiries he found that the girl's name was Bathsheba Everdeen, and that the cow would go dry in about seven days. He dreaded the eight-day. At last the eight-day came. The cow had ceased to give milk for that year, and Bathsheba Everdeen came up the hill no more. Gabriel had reached a pitch of existence he could never have anticipated a short time before. He liked saying Bathsheba as a private enjoyment instead of whistling. Turned over his taste to black hair, though he had sworn by Brown ever since he was a boy, isolated himself till the space he filled in the public eye was contemptibly small. Love was a possible strength in an actual weakness. Which transformed the distraction into a support, the power of which should be, and happily often is, in direct proportion to the degree of imbecility at the plants. Oak began now to see light in this direction, and said to himself, I'll make her my wife, I'll pump my soul, I shall be good for nothing. All this while he was perplexing himself about an errand on which he might consistently visit the cottage of Bathsheba's aunt. He found his opportunity in the death of E.U., mother of a living lamb. On a day which had a summer face and a winter constitution, a fine January morning when there was just enough blue sky visible to make cheerfully disposed people wish for more, and an occasional gleam of silvery sunshine, Oak put the lamb into a respectable Sunday basket, and stalked across the fields to the house of Mrs. Hurst, the aunt, George the dog walking behind, with the countenance of great concern at the serious turn pastoral affairs seemed to be taking. Gabriel had watched the blue wood smoke curling from the chimney with strange meditation. At evening he had fancifully traced it down the chimney to the spot of its origin, seeing the hearth and Bathsheba beside it, beside it in her outdoor dress, for the clothes she had worn on the hill whereby association, equally with her person, included in the compass of his affection. They seemed at this early time of his love a necessary ingredient of the sweet mixture called Bathsheba Everdeen. He made a toilette of a nicely adjusted kind, of a nature between the carefully neat and the carelessly ornate, of a degree between fine market-day and wet Sunday selection. He thoroughly cleaned his silver watch-chain with whiting, put new lacing straps to his boots, looked to the brass eyelet-holes, went to the inmost heart of the plantation for a new walking-stick, and trimmed it vigorously on his way back, took a new handkerchief from the bottom of his clothes-box, put on the light waistcoat patterned all over with springs of an elegant flower, uniting the beauties of both rose and lily, without the defective either, and used all the hair oil he possessed upon as usually dry, sandy, and inextricably curly hair, till he had deepened it to a splendidly novel colour between that of guano and roman cement, making it stick to his head like mace round a nutmeg, or wet seaweed round a bowler after the ebb. Nothing disturbed the stillness of the cottage saves a chatter of a knot of sparrows on the eaves. One might fancy scandal and rumour to be no less the staple topic of these little coteries on roofs than of those under them. It seemed that the omen was an unpropitious one, for, as the rather untoward commencement of oak's overtures, just as he arrived by the garden gate, he saw a cat inside, going into various arch-shapes and fiendish convulsions at the sight of his dog, George. The dog took no notice, for he had arrived at an age at which all superfluous barking was cynically avoided as a waste of breath. In fact, he never barked even at the sheep, except to order, when it was done with an absolutely neutral countenance, as a sort of combination service, which, though offensive, had to be gone through once now and then to frighten the flock for their own good. A voice came from behind some laurel bushes into which the cat had run. Poor dear! Did a nasty brute of a dog want to kill it? Did he? Poor dear! I beg your pardon, said oak to the voice, but George was walking on behind me with a temper as mild as milk. Almost before he had ceased speaking oak was seized with a misgiving, as to whose ear was the recipient of his answer. He appeared, and he heard the person retreat among the bushes. Gabriel meditated, and so deeply that he brought small furrows into his forehead by sheer force of reverie. Where the issue of an interview is as likely to be a vast change for the worse as for the better, any initial difference from expectation causes nipping sensations of failure. Oak went up to the door a little abashed. His mental rehearsal and the reality had had no common grounds of opening. Bathsheba's aunt was indoors. Will you tell Miss Everdain that somebody would be glad to speak to her? said Mr. Oak. Recalling oneself merely somebody, without giving a name, is not to be taken as an example of the ill-breeding of the rural world. It springs from a refined modesty of which townspeople with their cards and announcements have no notion whatever. Bathsheba was out. With a voice had evidently been hers. Will you come in, Mr. Oak? Oh, thank you, said Gabriel, following her to the fireplace. I brought a lamb for Miss Everdain. I thought she might light one to rare. Girls do. She might, said Mrs. Horst musingly, though she's only a visitor here. If you will wait a minute, Bathsheba will be in. Yes, I will wait, said Gabriel, sitting down. The lamb isn't really the business I came about, Mrs. Horst. In short, I was going to ask her if she'd like to be married. And were you indeed? Yes, because if she would, I should be very glad to marry her. Do you know if she's got any other young man hanging about her at all? Let me think, said Mrs. Horst, poking the fire superfluously. Yes, bless you. Ever so many young men. You see, Famer Oak, she's so good-looking, and an excellent scholar besides. She was going to be a governess once, you know. Only she was too wild. Not that her young men ever come here, but, lord, in the nature of women, she must have a dozen. Oh, that's unfortunate, said Famer Oak, contemplating a crack in the stone floor with sorrow. I'm only an everyday sort of man, and my only chance was in being the first-comer. Well, there's no use in me waiting. For that was all I came about. So I'll take myself off home along, Mrs. Horst. When Gabyl had gone about two hundred yards along the down, he heard a, hey, hey, uttered behind him, in a piping note of more treble quality than that in which the exclamation usually embodies itself when shouted across a field. He looked round, and saw a girl racing after him, waving a white handkerchief. Oak stood still, and the runner drew nearer. It was Bathsheba Everdeen. Gabyl's colour deepened. Hers was already deep, not as it appeared from emotion, but from running. Famer Oak! She said, pausing for want of breath, pulling up in front of him with a slanted face, and putting her hand to her side. I've just called to see you, said Gabyl, pending her further speech. Yes, I know that. She said panting like a robin, her face red and moist from her exertions, like a peony petal before the sun dries off the dew. I didn't know you had come to ask to have me, or I should have come in from the garden instantly. I ran after you to say that my aunt made a mistake in sending you away from courting me. Gabyl expanded. I'm sorry to have made you run so fast, my dear, he said, with a grateful sense of favours to come. Wait a bit till you've found your breath. It was quite a mistake, aunts, telling you I had a young man already, that Sheba went on. I haven't a sweetheart at all, and I never had one, and I thought that, as times go with women, it was such a pity to send you away thinking that I had several. Really and truly I am glad to hear that, said Famer Oak, smiling one of his long, special smiles, and blushing with gladness. He held out his hand to take hers, which when she had eased her side by pressing it there was prettily extended upon her bosom to still her loud beating heart. Directly he seized it she put it behind her, so that it slipped through his fingers like an eel. I have a nice snug little farm, said Gabyl, with half a degree less assurance than when he had seized her hand. Yes, you have. A man has advanced me money to begin with, but still it will soon be paid off, and though I'm only an everyday sort of man, I have gone a little since I was a boy. Gabyl uttered a little, in a tone to show her that it was in the complacent form of a great deal. He continued, When we be married, I am quite sure I can work twice as hard as I do now. He went forward and stretched out his arm again, but Sheba had overtaken him at a point besides which stood a low, stunted hollybush, now laden with red berries. Seeing his advance take the form of an attitude threatening a possible enclosure, made from not compression, of her person, she edged off round the bush. Why, Farmer Oak, she said over the top, looking at him with rounded eyes, I never said I was going to marry you. Well, that is a tale, said Oak with dismay. It's run after anybody like this, and then say you don't want him. What I meant to tell you was only this, she said eagerly, and yet half conscious of the absurdity of the position she had made for herself, that nobody has got me yet as a sweetheart instead of my having a dozen, as my aunt said. I hate to be taught of his men's property in that way, though possibly I shall be had some day. Why, if I'd wanted you, I shouldn't have run after you like this. It would have been the forwardest thing. But there was no harm in hurrying to correct the piece of false news that had been told you. Oh, no, no harm at all. But there is such a thing as being too generous in expressing a judgment impulsively, and, oh, God, with a more appreciative sense of all the circumstances. Well, I'm not quite certain there was no harm. Indeed, I hadn't time to think before starting whether I wanted to marry or not, for you'd have been gone over the hill. Come, said Gabriel, freshening again. Think a minute or two. I'll wait a while, Miss Everdeen. Will you marry me? Do, Bathsheba, I love you far more than common. I'll try to think, she observed rather more timorously. If I can think out of doors, my mind spreads away so. But you can give a guess. Then give me time. Bathsheba looked thoughtfully into the distance away from the direction in which Gabriel stood. I can make you happy, he said to the back of her head, across the bush. You shall have a piano in a year or two. Farmers' wives are getting to have pianos now, and I'll practice up the flute right well to play with you in the evenings. Yes, I should like that. And have one of those little ten-pound gigs for market, and nice flowers and birds, cocks and ends, I mean, because they'd be useful, continued Gabriel, feeling balanced between poetry and practicality. I should like it very much. And a frame for cucumbers like a gentleman and lady. Yes. And when the wedding was over, we'd have a put in the newspaper's list of marriages. Dearly I should like that. And the babies in the berths, every man jack of them, and I own with a fire whenever you look up there I shall be, and whenever I look up there will be you. Wait, wait, and don't be improper. Her countenance fell, and she was silent a while. He regarded the red berries between them over and over again, to such an extent that Holly seemed, in his afterlife, to be a cipher, signifying a proposal of marriage. Bathsheba decisively turned to him. No, there's no use, she said. I don't want to marry you. Try. I have tried hard all the time I've been thinking, for a marriage would be very nice in one sense, people would talk about me, and think I had won my battle, and I should feel triumphant, and all that, but a husband. Well? Why, he'd always be there, as you say, whenever I looked up. There he'd be. Of course he would. Aye, that is. Well, what I mean is that I shouldn't mind being a bride at a wedding, if I could be one without having a husband. But since a woman can't show off in that way by herself, I shan't marry, or at least yet. That's a terrible wooden story. At this criticism of her statement, Bathsheba made in addition to her dignity by a slight sweep away from him. "'Pon my heart and soul, I don't know what a maid can say stupider than that,' said Oak, but dearest, who continued in a palliative voice. Don't be like it.' Oak sighed a deep on a sigh, nonetheless so, in that, being like a sigh of a pine plantation, it was rather noticeable as a disturbance of the atmosphere. "'Why won't you have me?' he appealed, creeping round the holly to reach her side. "'I cannot,' she said, retreating. "'But why?' he persisted, standing still at last in despair of ever reaching her, and facing over the bush. "'Because I don't love you.' "'Yes, but?' she contracted a yawn to an inoffensive smallness, so that it was hardly ill mannered at all. "'I don't love you,' she said. "'But I love you, and as for myself, I am content to be liked.' "'Oh, Mr. Oak, that's very fine. You'd get to despise me.' "'Never,' said Mr. Oak, so earnestly, that he seemed to be coming by the force of his words straight through the bush and into her arms. "'I shall do one thing in this life, one thing certain that is. Love you, and long for you, and keep wanting you till I die.' His voice had a genuine pathos now, and his large brown hands perceptibly trembled. "'It seems dreadfully wrong not to have you when you feel so much,' she said, with a little distress, and looking hopelessly around for some means of escape from her moral dilemma. How I wish I hadn't run after you!' However she seemed to have a shortcut for getting back to cheerfulness, and set her face to signify archeness. "'It wouldn't do, Mr. Oak. I want somebody to tame me. I am too independent, and you would never be able to, I know.' Oak cast his eyes down the field, in a way implying that it was useless to attempt argument. "'Mr. Oak,' she said, with luminous distinctness and common sense, "'you are better off than I. I have hardly a penny in the world. I am staying with my aunt for my bare sustenance. I am better educated than you, and I don't love you a bit. That's my side of the case. Now yours. You were a farmer just beginning, and you ought in common prudence if you marry at all, which you should certainly not think of doing at present, to marry a woman with money, who would stock a larger farm for you than you have now.' Gabriel looked at her with a little surprise, and much admiration. "'That's the very thing I had been thinking myself,' he naively said. Farmer Oak had one-and-a-half Christian characteristics too many to succeed as Bathsheba, his humility, and a superfluous moiety of honesty. Bathsheba was decidedly disconcerted. "'Well, then, why did you come and disturb me?' she said, almost angrily, if not quite, an enlarging red spot rising in each cheek. "'I can't do what I think would be—would be—' "'Right?' "'No. Wise.' "'You have made an admission now, Mr. Oak,' she exclaimed, with even more hoture, and rocking her head disdainfully. "'After that you think I could marry you? Not if I know it.' He broke in passionately. "'But don't mistake me like that. Because I am open enough to own, what every man in my shoes would have thought, you make your colours come up your face and get crammed with me. But that about you are not being good enough for me is nonsense. You speak like a lady, all the parish note is it, and your uncle at Wethery is, I have hired a large farmer, much larger than ever I shall be. May I call in the evening, or will you walk along with me a Sunday? I want you to make up your mind at once, if you'd rather not.' "'No, no, I cannot. Don't press me any more. Don't. I don't love you, so it would be ridiculous,' she said with a laugh. "'No man likes to see his emotions the sport of a merry-go-round of skittishness.' "'Very well,' said Oak, firmly, with the bearing of one who is going to give his days and nights to Ecclesiastes for ever. Then I'll ask you no more.' End of CHAPTER IV. The news which one day reached Gabriel, that Bathsheba Everdeen had left the neighbourhood, had an influence upon him which might have surprised any who never suspected that the more emphatic the renunciation the less absolute its character. It may have been observed that there is no regular path for getting out of love as there is for getting in. Some people look upon marriage as a shortcut that way, but it has been known to fail. Separation, which was the means that chants offered to Gabriel Oak by Bathsheba's disappearance, though effectual with people of certain humours, is apt to idealise the removed object with others, notably those whose affection, placid and regular as it may be, flows deep and long. Oak belonged to the even-tempered order of humanity, and felt the secret fusion of himself and Bathsheba to be burning with a finer flame now that she was gone. That was all. His incipient friendship with her aunt had been nipped by the failure of his suit, and all that Oak learnt of Bathsheba's movements was done indirectly. It appeared that she had gone to a place called Weatherbury, more than twenty miles off, but in what capacity, whether as a visitor or permanently, he could not discover. Gabriel had two dogs. George, the elder, exhibited an ebony tipped nose, surrounded by a narrow margin of pink flesh and a coat marked in random splotches, approximating in colour to white and slaty grey. But the grey, after years of sun and rain, had been scorched and washed out of the more prominent locks, leaving them of a reddish brown, as if the blue component of the grey had faded, like the indigo from the same kind of colour in Turner's pictures. In substance it had originally been hair, but long contact with sheep seemed to be turning it by degrees into wool of a poor quality and staple. This dog had originally belonged to a shepherd of inferior morals and dreadful temper, and the result was that George knew the exact degrees of condemnation signified by cursing and swearing of all descriptions better than the wickedest old man in the neighbourhood. Long experience had so precisely taught the animal the difference between such exclamations as, come in, and, damn ye, come in, that he knew to a hair's breadth the rate of trotting back from the used hails that each call involved, if a staggerer with the sheep-crook was to be escaped. Though old he was clever and trustworthy still. The young dog, George's son, might possibly have been the image of his mother, for there was not much resemblance between him and George. He was learning the sheep-keeping business, so as to follow on at a flock when the other should die, but had got no further than the rudiments as yet. Still finding an insuperable difficulty in distinguishing between doing a thing well enough and doing it too well. So earnest and yet so long-headed was this young dog. He had no name in particular and answered with perfect readiness to any pleasant interjection. That if sent behind the flock to help them on, he did it so thoroughly that he would have chased them across the whole county with the greatest pleasure if not called off or reminded when to stop by the example of old George. Thus much for the dogs. On the further side of Norcom Hill was a chalk-pit from which chalk had been drawn for generations and spread over adjacent farms. Two hedges converged upon it in the form of a V, but without quite meeting. The narrow opening left, which was immediately over the brow of the pit, was protected by a rough railing. One night when Farmer Oak had returned to his house, believing there would be no further necessity for his attendance on the down, he called as usual to the dogs, previously to shutting them up in the out-house till next morning. Only one responded, old George. The other could not be found, either in the house, lane, or garden. Gabriel then remembered that he had left the two dogs on the hill leading a dead lamb, a kind of meat he usually kept from them except when other food ran short, and concluding that the young one had not finished his meal, he went indoors to the luxury of a bed, which laterly he had only enjoyed on Sundays. It was a still moist night. Just before dawn he was assisted in waking by the abnormal reverberation of familiar music. To the shepherd, the note of the sheep-bell, like the ticking of the clock to other people, is a chronic sound that only makes itself noticed by ceasing or altering in some unusual manner from the well-known idle twinkle which signifies to the accustomed ear, however distant, that all is well in the fold. In the solemn calm of the awakening morn that note was heard by Gabriel beating with unusual violence and rapidity. This exceptional ringing may be caused in two ways by the rapid feeding of the sheep bearing the bell as when the flock breaks into new pasture which gives it an intermittent rapidity, or by the sheep starting off in a run when the sound has a regular palpitation. The experienced ear of oak knew the sound he now heard to be caused by the running of the flock with great velocity. He jumped out of bed, dressed, tore down the lane through a foggy dawn, and ascended the hill. The forward use were kept apart from those among which the fall of lambs would be later, there being two hundred of the latter class in Gabriel's flock. These two hundred seemed to have absolutely vanished from the hill. There were the fifty with their lambs enclosed at the other end as he had left them, but the rest forming the bulk of the flock were nowhere. Gabriel called at the top of his voice the shepherd's call. OV, OV, OV! Not a single bleat. He went to the hedge, a gap had been broken through it, and in the gap were the footprints of the sheep. Rather surprised to find them break fence at this season, yet putting it down instantly to their great fondness for ivy and winter time, of which a great deal grew in the plantation, he followed through the hedge. They were not in the plantation. He called again. The valleys and farthest hills resounded as when the sailors invoked the lost hylas on the Mycian shore, but no sheep. He passed through the trees and along the ridge of the hill. On the extreme summit where the ends of the two converging hedges of which we have spoken were stopped short by meeting the brow of the chalk-pit, he saw the younger dog standing against the sky, dark and motionless as Napoleon at St. Helena. A horrible conviction darted through Oak, with his sensation of bodily faintness he advanced. At one point the rails were broken through, and there he saw the footprints of his youth. The dog came up, licked his hand, and made signs implying that he expected some great reward for signal services rendered. Oak looked over the precipice. The youth lay dead and dying at its foot, a heap of two hundred mangled carcasses representing in their condition just now at least two hundred more. Oak was an intensely humane man, indeed his humanity often tore in pieces any politic intentions of his which bordered on strategy, and carried him on as by gravitation. A shadow in his life had always been that his flock ended in Mutton, that a day came and found every shepherd and aren't traitor to his defense this sheep. His first feeling now was one of pity for the untimely fate of these gentle youths and their unborn lambs. It was a second to remember another phase of the matter. The sheep were not insured. All the savings of a frugal life had been dispersed at a blow. His hopes of being an independent farmer were laid low, and possibly forever. Gabriel's energies, patience, and industry had been so severely taxed during the years of his life between 18 and 8 and 20 to reach his present stage of progress that no more seemed to be left in him. He lent down upon a rail, and covered his face with his hands. Stupors, however, do not last forever, and farmer Oak recovered from his. It was as remarkable as it was characteristic that the one sentence he uttered was in thankfulness. Thank God I am not married. What would she have done in the poverty now coming upon me? Oak raised his head, and, wondering what he could do, listlessly surveyed the scene. By the outer margin of the pit was an oval pond, and over it hung the attenuated skeleton of a chrome yellow moon, which had only a few days to last, the morning star dogging her on the left hand. The pool glittered like a dead man's eye, and as the world awoke a breeze blew, shaking and elongating the reflection of the moon without breaking it, and turning the image of the star to a phosphoric streak upon the water. All this Oak saw and remembered. As far as could be learned it appeared that the poor young dog still under the impression that since he was kept for running after sheep, the more he ran after them the better. Had at the end of his meal of the dead lamb, which may have given him additional energy and spirits, collected all the use into a corner, driven the timid creatures through the hedge, across the upper field, and by main force of worrying had given them momentum enough to break down a portion of the rotten railing, and so hurled them over the edge. George's son had done his work so thoroughly that he was considered too good a workman to live, and was, in fact, taken and tragically shot at twelve o'clock that same day. Another instance of the untoward fate which so often attends dogs and other philosophers, who follow out a train of reasoning to its logical conclusion, and attempt perfectly consistent conduct in a world made up so largely of compromise. Gabriel's farm had been stocked by a dealer, on the strength of Oak's promising look and character, who was receiving a percentage from the farmer till such time as the advance should be cleared off. Oak found that the value of stock, plant, and implements, which were really his own, would be about sufficient to pay his debts, leaving himself a free man with the clothes he stood up in, and nothing more. CHAPTER VI The fair, the journey, the fire. Two months passed away. We are brought on to a day in February on which is held the yearly statute or hiring fair in the county town of Casterbridge. At one end of the street stood from two to three hundred blithe and hearty labourers waiting upon chance. All men of the stamp to whom labour suggests nothing worse than a wrestle with gravitation, and pleasure nothing better than a renunciation of the same. Among these, carters and wagoners were distinguished by having a piece of whip-court twisted round their hats. Thatchers wore a fragment of woven straw. Carters held their sheep-crucks in their hands, and thus the situation required was known to the higher-edited lance. In the crowd was an athletic young fellow of somewhat superior appearance to the rest. In fact, his superiority was marked enough to lead several ruddy peasants standing by to speak to him inquiringly, as to a farmer, and to use sir as a finishing word. His answer always was, I am looking for a place myself, a bailiff's. Do you know of anybody who wants one? The reveal was paler now, his eyes were more meditative, and his expression was more sad. He had passed through an ordeal of wretchedness which had given him more than it had taken away. He had sunk from his modest elevation as pastoral king into the very slime pits of Sidham. But there was left to him a dignified calm he had never before known, and that indifference to fate which, though it often makes a villain of a man, is the basis of his sublimity when it does not, and thus the abasement had been exaltation, and the loss gain. In the morning a regiment of cavalry had left a town, and a sergeant and his party had been beating up for recruits through the four streets. As the end of the day drew on, and he found himself not hired, Gabriel almost wished that he had joined him, and gone off to serve his country. Weary of standing in the marketplace and not much mind in the kind of work he turned his hand to, he decided to offer himself in some other capacity than that of Bailiff. All the farmers seemed to be wanting shepherds. Sheep-tending was Gabriel's speciality. Turning down an obscure street and entering an obscure lane, he went up to a smith's shop. How long would it take you to make a shepherd's crook? Twenty minutes. How much? Two shillens. He sat on a bench, and the crook was made, a stem being given him into the bargain. He then went to a ready-made clothes-shop, the owner of which had a large rural connection. As the crook had absorbed most of Gabriel's money, he attempted and carried out an exchange of his overcoat for his shepherd's regulation-smock frock. This transaction having been completed, he again hurried off to the centre of the town, and stood on the curb of the pavement as a shepherd crook in hand. Not a loke had turned himself into his shepherd. It seemed that Bailiffs were most in demand. However, two or three farmers noticed him and drew near. Dialogues followed, more or less in the subjoint form. Where do you come from? Norcom. That's a long way. Fifteen miles. Who's farmer you upon last? My own. This reply invariably operated like a rumour of cholera. The inquiring farmer would edge away and shake his head dubiously. Gabriel, like his dog, was too good to be trustworthy, and he never made advance beyond this point. It is safer to accept any chance that offers itself and extemporize a procedure to fit it than to get a good plan matured and wait for a chance of using it. Gabriel wished he had not nailed up his colours as his shepherd, but had laid himself out for anything in the whole cycle of labour that was required in the fair. It grew dusk. Some merry men were whistling and singing by the corn exchange. Gabriel's hand, which had lain for some time idle in his smock-flock pocket, touched his flute which he carried there. Here was an opportunity for putting his dearly bought wisdom into practice. He drew out his flute and began to play jocky to the fair, in the style of a man who had never known a moment's sorrow. Oak could pipe with arcadian sweetness, and the sound of the well-known notes cheered his own heart as well as those of the loungers. He played on with spirit, and in half an hour had earned and pence what was a small fortune to a destitute man. By making inquiries he learned that there was another fair at Shotsford the next day. How far is Shotsford? Ten miles to the side of Wetherbury. Wetherbury. It was where Bathsheba had gone two months before. This information was like coming from night into noon. How far is it to Wetherbury? Five or six miles. Bathsheba had probably left Wetherbury long before this time, but the place had enough interest attaching to it to lead Oak to choose Shotsford Fair as his next field of inquiry, because it lay in the Wetherbury quarter. Moreover, the Wetherbury folk were by no means uninteresting, intrinsically. If reports spoke truly they were as hardy, merry, thriving, wicked as set, as any in the whole county. Oak resolved to sleep at Wetherbury that night on his way to Shotsford, and struck out at once into the high road which had been recommended as the direct route to the village in question. The road stretched through water meadows traversed by little brooks whose quivering surfaces were braided along their centres, and folded into creases at the sides, or where the flow was more rapid, the stream was pied with spots of white froth, which rode on in undisturbed serenity. On the higher levels the dead and dry carcasses of leaves tapped the ground as they bowled along helter-skelter upon the shoulders of the wind, and little birds in the hedges were rustling their feathers and tucking themselves in comfortably for the night, retaining their places if Oak kept moving, but flying away if he stopped to look at them. He passed by Yalbury Wood, where the game-birds were rising to their roots, and heard the crack-voiced cock-fesant kuk-kuk and the wheezy whistles of the hens. By the time he had walked three or four miles every shape in the landscape had assumed a uniform hue of blackness. He descended Yalbury Hill, and could just discern ahead of him a wagon, drawn up under a great overhanging tree by the roadside. On coming close he found there were no horses attached to it, the spot being apparently quite deserted. The wagon, from its position, seemed to have been left there for the night, for beyond about half a truss of hay which was heaped in the bottom it was quite empty. Hill sat down on the shafts of the vehicle, and considered his position. He calculated that he had walked a very fair proportion of the journey, and having been on foot since daybreak he felt tempted to lie down upon the hay in the wagon, instead of pushing on to the village of Wetherbury, and having to pay for a lodging. Eating his last slices of bread and ham, and drinking from the bottle of cider he had taken the precaution to bring with him, he got into the lonely wagon. Here he sped half of the hay as a bed, and as well as he could in the darkness, pulled the other half over him by way of bed clothes, covering himself entirely, and feeling physically as comfortable as ever he had been in his life. Inward melancholy it was impossible for a man like Oak, introspective far beyond his neighbours, to banish quite, whilst conning the present untoward page of his history. So thinking of his misfortunes, amorous and pastoral, he fell asleep. Shepherds enjoying in common with sailors, the privilege of being able to summon the God, instead of having to wait for him. On somewhat suddenly awaking, after a sleep of whose length he had no idea, Oak found that the wagon was in motion. He was being carried along the road, and arrayed rather considerable for a vehicle without springs, and under circumstances of physical uneasiness, his head being dandled up and down on the bed of the wagon like a kettle-drum stick. He then distinguished voices and conversation, coming from the fore part of the wagon. His concern at his dilemma, which would have been alarm had he been a thriving man, but misfortune is a fine opiate to personal terror, led him to peer cautiously from the hay, and the first sight he beheld was the stars above him. Charles's wane was getting towards a right angle with the pole-star, and Gabriel concluded that it must be about nine o'clock, in other words that he had slept two hours. This small astronomical calculation was made without any positive effort, and whilst he was stealthily turning to discover if possible into whose hands he had fallen. Two figures were dimly visible in front, sitting with their legs outside the wagon, one of whom was driving. Gabriel soon found that this was the wagoner, and it appeared that he had come from Castor Bridge Fair like himself. A conversation was in progress, which continued thus. Be as twill, she is a fine and some body as far as looks be concerned, but that's only the skin of the woman, and these dandy cattle be as proud as Lucifer in their insides. Aye, so it is same, Bill Smallbury, so it is same. This utterance was very shaky by nature, and more so by circumstance the jolting of the wagon not being without its effect upon the speaker's larynx. It came from the man who held the reins. She's a very vain female, so to said here and there. Aye, now, if so be it is like that, I can't look her in the face. Lord, no, not aye, such a shy man as I be. Yes, she's very vain, to say that every night I go into bed, she looks in the glass to put on her nightcap properly. And not a married woman, or the world. And I can play the piano, so to said. Can play so clever that I can make a Sam-tune sound as well as the merriest loose song a man can wish for. But ye tell it, a happy time for us, and I feel quite a new man. And how do she pay? That I don't know, master poor grass. On hearing these and other similar remarks a wild thought flashed into Gabriel's mind that it might be speaking of Bathsheba, there were, however, no grounds for retaining such a supposition for the wagon, though going in the direction of Wetherbury might be going beyond it, and the woman alluded to seem to be the mistress of some estate. They were now apparently close upon Wetherbury, and not to alarm the speakers unnecessarily, Gabriel slipped out of the wagon unseen. He turned to an opening in the hedge, which he found to be a gate, and mounting thereon. He sat meditating whether to seek a cheap lodging in the village, or to ensure a cheaper one by lying under some hay or corn-stack. The crunching jangle of the wagon died upon his ear. He was about to walk on, when he noticed on his left hand an unusual light appearing about half a mile distant. Oak watched it, and the glow increased. Something was on fire. Gabriel again mounted the gate, and, leaping down on the other side upon what he found to be plowed soil, made across the field in the exact direction of the fire. The blaze, enlarging in a double ratio by his approach, and its own increase, showed him as he drew nearer the outline of ricks beside it, lighted up to great distinctness. A rickyard was the source of the fire. His weary face now began to be painted over with a rich orange glow, and the whole front of his smock-frock and gaiters was covered with a dancing shadow-pattern of torn twigs, the light reaching him through a leafless, intervening hedge, and the metallic curve of his sheep-crook shone silver bright in the same abounding rays. He came up to the boundary fence, and stood to regain breath. It seemed as if the spot was unoccupied by a living soul. The fire was issuing from a long straw-stack, which was so far gone as to preclude a possibility of saving it. A rick burns differently from a house. As the wind blows the fire inwards, the portion in flames completely disappears like melting sugar, and the outline is lost to the eye. However, a hay or wheat-rick well put together will resist combustion for a length of time, if it begins on the outside. This before Gabriel's eyes was a rick of straw, loosely put together, and the flames darted into it with lightning swiftness. It glowed on the windward side, rising and falling in intensity, like the coal of a cigar. Then a super-incumbent bundle rolled down with a whisking noise, flames elongated, and bent themselves about with a quiet roar, but no crackle. Licks of smoke went off horizontally at the back like passing clouds, and behind these burned hidden pyres, illuminating the semi-transparent sheet of smoke to illustrious yellow uniformity. Individual straws in the foreground were consumed in a creeping movement of ruddy heat, as if they were knots of red worms, and above shone imaginary fiery faces, tongues hanging from lips, glaring eyes, and other impish forms, from which at intervals sparks flew in clusters like birds from a nest. Oak suddenly ceased from being a mere spectator by discovering the case to be more serious than he had first imagined. A scroll of smoke blew aside and revealed to him a wheat-rick in startling juxtaposition with a decaying one, and behind this a series of others composing the main corn produce of the farm, so that instead of the straw stack standing, as he had imagined comparatively isolated, there was a regular connection between it and the remaining stacks as a group. Gabriel leapt over the hedge, and saw that he was not alone. The first man he came to was running about in a great hurry, as if his totes were several yards in advance of his body, which they could never drag on fast enough. Oh, man! Fire! Fire! A good master and a bad servant is fire! Fire! I mean, a bad servant and a good master. Oh! Mark Clarke, come! And you, Billy Smallbury, and you, Mary Ann Money, and you, John Cullen, and Matthew there! Other figures now appeared behind this shouting man and among the smoke, and Gabriel found that, far from being alone, he was in a great company, whose shadows danced merrily up and down, timed by the jigging of the flames and not at all by their owner's movements. The assemblage, belonging to that class of society which casts its totes into the form of feeling and its feelings into the form of commotion, set to work with a remarkable confusion of purpose. Stop the draught under the wheat-rick, cried Gabriel to those nearest to him. The corn stood on stones, drattles, and between these, tongues of yellow hue, from the burning straw licked and darted playfully. If the fire once got under this stack, all would be lost. Get a tarpel and quick, said Gabriel. A rickcloth was brought, and they hung it like a curtain across the channel. The flames immediately ceased to go under the bottom of the corn-stack, and stood up vertical. Stand here with a bucket of water, and keep the cloth wet, said Gabriel again. The flames, now driven upward, began to attack the angles of the huge roof covering the wheat-stack. A ladder, cried Gabriel. The ladder was against the straw rick, and it was born to a cinder, set a spectre-like form in the smoke. Oak seized the cut-ends of the sheaves, as if he were going to engage in the operation of reed-drawing, and digging in his feet and occasionally sticking in the stem of his sheep-crook. He clambered up the beatling face. He had once sat astride the very apex, and began with his crook to beat off the fiery fragments which had lodged thereon, shouting to the others to get him a bow and a ladder, and some water. Billy Smallbury, one of the men who had been on the wagon, by this time had found a ladder, which Mark Clark ascended, holding on beside Oak upon the tach. The smoke at this corner was stifling, and Clark and Nimblefellow, having been handed a bucket of water, bathed its oak's face and sprinkled him generally, whilst Gabriel, now with a long beech-bow in one hand, in addition to his crook in the other, kept sweeping the stack and dislodging all fiery particles. On the ground the groups of villagers were still occupied in doing all they could to keep down the conflagration, which was not much. They were all tinged orange, and backed up by shadows of varying pattern. Round the corner of the largest stack, out of the direct rays of the fire, stood a pony bearing a young woman on its back. By her side was another woman on foot. These two seemed to keep at a distance from the fire, that the horse might not become restive. "'He's a shepherd,' said the woman on foot. "'Yes, he is. See how his crook shines as he beats the rick with it? And his smock-frock is burnt in two holes,' hide it there. "'A fine young shepherd he is, too, ma'am.' "'Whose shepherd is he?' said the equestrian in a clear voice. "'I don't know, ma'am. "'Don't any of the others know? Nobody at all. I've asked them. Quite a stranger, they say.' The young woman on the pony rode out from the shade and looked anxiously around. "'Do you think the barn is safe?' she said. "'Do you think the barn is safe?' Jan Coggan said, the second woman, passing on the question to the nearest man in that direction. "'Safe now? Least ways, I think so. If his rick had gone, the barn would have followed. "'Tis that bold shepherd up there that had done the most good? He's sitting on top of that rick whizzing his great long arms about like a windmill.' "'He does work hard,' said the young woman on horseback, looking up at Gabriel through her thick woolen veil. "'I wish he was shepherd here. Don't any of you know his name?' "'There there the man's name in my life, or seed is for him before.' The fire began to get worsted, and Gabriel's elevated position being no longer required of him, he made as if to descend. "'Mere Ann,' said the girl on horseback, go to him as he comes down and say that the farmer wishes to thank him for the great service he has done. Mere Ann stalked off towards the rick and met Oak at the foot of the ladder, and she delivered her message. "'Where is your master, the farmer?' said Gabriel, kindling with the idea of getting employment that seemed to strike him now. "'It isn't a master, it is a mistress shepherd.' "'A woman farmer?' "'Ah, I believe, and a rich one too,' said a boy's standard. "'Lately he came here from a distance. "'Took on her uncle's farm, who died suddenly, and used to measure his money in half-point cups. "'They say now that she business in every bank in Casperbridge, and thinks no more of playing pitch-and-toss sovereign than you and I do pitch-happening. Not a bit in the world, shepherd.' "'That she, back up there on the pony,' said Mere Ann, where face had covered up in a black cloth with holes in it. Oak, his features smudged, grimy and undiscoverable from the smoke and heat, his smock-flock burnt into holes and dripping with water, the ashtem of a sheep-cruck, charred six inches shorter, advanced with the humility stern adversity had thrust upon him up to the slight female form in the saddle. He lifted his hat with respect, and not without gallantry, stepping close to her hanging feet, he said, in a hesitating voice. Do you happen to want the shepherd, ma'am?" She lifted the wool-veil tied round her face, and looked all astonishment. Gabriel and his cold-hearted darling Bathsheba everdeen were face-to-face. Bathsheba did not speak, and he mechanically repeated in an abashed and sad voice. "'Do you want the shepherd, ma'am?' CHAPTER VI Bathsheba withdrew into the shade. She scarcely knew whether most to be amused at the singularity of the meeting, or to be concerned at his awkwardness. There was room for a little pity, also for a very little exultation, the former at his position and the latter at her own. Embarrassed she was not, and she remembered Gabriel's declaration of love to her at Norcombe only to think she had nearly forgotten it. "'Yes,' she murmured, putting on an air of dignity and turning again to him with a little warmth of cheek, I do want a shepherd, but—' "'He's a very man, ma'am,' said one of the villagers quietly. Conviction breeds conviction. "'Ah, that is,' said a second decisively. "'The man truly,' said a third with heartiness. "'He's all there,' said Number Four, fervently. "'Then will you tell him to speak to the Baeliff?' said Bathsheba. All was practical again now, as summer eve and loneliness would have been necessary to give the meeting its proper fullness of romance. The Baeliff was pointed out to Gabriel, who, checking the palpitation within his breast at discovering that his ashtaret of strange report was only a modification of Venus, the well-known and admired, retired with him to talk over the necessary preliminaries of hiring. The fire before them wasted away. "'Men,' said Bathsheba, you shall take a little refreshment after this extra work. Will you come to the house?' You could knock in a bit and then drop a good deal free or miss. If so be you'd send it to Warren's malt-house,' replied the spokesman. Bathsheba then rode off into the darkness, and the men straggled on to the village in twos and threes, oak and the Baeliff being left by the rick alone. "'Now,' said the Baeliff, finally, "'all is settled, I think, about your common, and I'm going home along. Good night, ye shepherd.' "'Can you get me a lodgin?' inquired Gabriel. "'I can't indeed,' he said, moving past oak as the Christian edges past an offertory plate, when he does not mean to contribute. If you follow on the road till you come to Warren's malt-house, where they are all gone to add their snap of victuals, I dare say some of them will tell you of a place. Good night, ye shepherd.' The Baeliff who showed this nervous dread of loving his neighbour as himself, went up the hill and oak walked on to the village, still astonished at the rent-counter with Bathsheba, glad of his nearness to her and perplexed at the rapidity with which the unpracticed girl of Norcombe had developed into the supervising and cool woman here. But some women only require an emergency to make them fit for one. Obligeed to some extent to forego dreamy in order to find the way, he reached the churchyard, and passed round it under the wall, where several ancient trees grew. There was a wide margin of grass along here, and Gabriel's footsteps were deadened by its softness, even at this injurating period of the year. When abreast of a trunk which appeared to be the oldest of the old, he became aware that a figure was standing behind it. Gabriel did not pause in his walk, and in another moment he accidentally kicked a loose stone. The noise was enough to disturb the motionless stranger, who started, and assumed a careless position. It was a slim girl, rather thinly clad. "'Good night to you,' said Gabriel heartily. "'Good night,' said the girl to Gabriel. The voice was unexpectedly attractive. It was the low and dulcet note suggestive of romance, common in descriptions and rare in experience. "'I'll thank you to tell me if I'm in the way for Warren's Malthouse,' Gabriel resumed, primarily to gain the information indirectly to get more of the music. "'Quite right. It's at the bottom of the hill, and do you know?' The girl hesitated, and then went on again. "'Do you know how late they keep open the book's head in?' She seemed to be won by Gabriel's heartiness, as Gabriel had been won by her modulations. "'I don't know where the book's head is, or anything about it. Do you think of going there to-night?' "'Yes.' The woman again paused. There was no necessity for any continuance of speech, and the fact that she did add more seemed to proceed from an unconscious desire to show unconcern by making a remark, which is noticeable in the ingenuous when they are acting by stealth. "'You are not a weather-bury man,' she said, timorously. "'I am not. I am the new shepherd, just arrived.' "'Holy a shepherd, and you seem almost a farmer by your ways.' "'Holy a shepherd,' Gabriel repeated in a dull cadence of finality. His thoughts were directed to the past, his eyes to the feet of the girl, and for the first time he saw lying there a bundle of some sort. She may have perceived a direction of his face, for she said coaxingly, "'You won't say anything in the parish about having seen me here, will you? At least not for a day or two.' "'I won't have you wish me not to,' said Oak.' "'Thank you, indeed,' the other replied. "'I am rather poor, and I don't want people to know anything about me.' Then she was silent and shivered. "'You ought to have a cloak on such a cold night,' Gabriel observed. I would advise you to get indoors.' "'Oh, no, would you mind going on and leaving me? I thank you much for what you have told me.' "'I will go on,' he said, adding hesitatingly, since you were not very well off. Perhaps you would accept this trifle from me. It's only a shillen, but it's all I have to spare.' "'Yes, I will take it,' said the stranger gratefully. She extended her hand, Gabriel his, and feeling for each other's palm and the gloom before the money could be passed, a minute incident occurred which told much. Gabriel's finger alighted on the young woman's wrist. He was beating with a throb of tragic intensity. He had frequently felt the same quick, hard beat in the femoral artery of his lambs when over-driven. It suggested a consumption too great of a vitality which, to judge from her figure and stature, was already too little. "'What is the matter?' "'Nothing.' "'Ah, but there is.' "'No, no, no, let you having seen me be a secret.' "'Very well, I will. Good night again.' Good night. The young girl remained motionless by the tree, and Gabriel descended into the village of Weatherbury, or lower long puddle, as it was sometimes called. He fancied that he had felt himself in the penumbra of a very deep sadness when touching that slight and fragile creature, but wisdom lies in moderating mere impressions, and Gabriel endeavoured to think little of this. End of Chapter 7 . .