NIGHT--HORSES TRAMPING

The village of Weatherbury was quiet as the graveyard in its midst,
and the living were lying well-nigh as still as the dead.  The church
clock struck eleven.  The air was so empty of other sounds that the
whirr of the clock-work immediately before the strokes was distinct,
and so was also the click of the same at their close.  The notes flew
forth with the usual blind obtuseness of inanimate things--flapping
and rebounding among walls, undulating against the scattered clouds,
spreading through their interstices into unexplored miles of space.

Bathsheba's crannied and mouldy halls were to-night occupied only by
Maryann, Liddy being, as was stated, with her sister, whom Bathsheba
had set out to visit.  A few minutes after eleven had struck, Maryann
turned in her bed with a sense of being disturbed.  She was totally
unconscious of the nature of the interruption to her sleep.  It led
to a dream, and the dream to an awakening, with an uneasy sensation
that something had happened.  She left her bed and looked out of the
window.  The paddock abutted on this end of the building, and in the
paddock she could just discern by the uncertain gray a moving figure
approaching the horse that was feeding there.  The figure seized the
horse by the forelock, and led it to the corner of the field.  Here
she could see some object which circumstances proved to be a vehicle,
for after a few minutes spent apparently in harnessing, she heard the
trot of the horse down the road, mingled with the sound of light
wheels.

Two varieties only of humanity could have entered the paddock with
the ghostlike glide of that mysterious figure.  They were a woman and
a gipsy man.  A woman was out of the question in such an occupation
at this hour, and the comer could be no less than a thief, who might
probably have known the weakness of the household on this particular
night, and have chosen it on that account for his daring attempt.
Moreover, to raise suspicion to conviction itself, there were gipsies
in Weatherbury Bottom.

Maryann, who had been afraid to shout in the robber's presence,
having seen him depart had no fear.  She hastily slipped on her
clothes, stumped down the disjointed staircase with its hundred
creaks, ran to Coggan's, the nearest house, and raised an alarm.
Coggan called Gabriel, who now again lodged in his house as at first,
and together they went to the paddock.  Beyond all doubt the horse
was gone.

"Hark!" said Gabriel.

They listened.  Distinct upon the stagnant air came the sounds of a
trotting horse passing up Longpuddle Lane--just beyond the gipsies'
encampment in Weatherbury Bottom.

"That's our Dainty--I'll swear to her step," said Jan.

"Mighty me!  Won't mis'ess storm and call us stupids when she comes
back!" moaned Maryann.  "How I wish it had happened when she was at
home, and none of us had been answerable!"

"We must ride after," said Gabriel, decisively.  "I'll  be
responsible to Miss Everdene for what we do.  Yes, we'll follow."

"Faith, I don't see how," said Coggan.  "All our horses are too heavy
for that trick except little Poppet, and what's she between two of
us?--If we only had that pair over the hedge we might do something."

"Which pair?"

"Mr. Boldwood's Tidy and Moll."

"Then wait here till I come hither again," said Gabriel.  He ran down
the hill towards Farmer Boldwood's.

"Farmer Boldwood is not at home," said Maryann.

"All the better," said Coggan.  "I know what he's gone for."

Less than five minutes brought up Oak again, running at the same
pace, with two halters dangling from his hand.

"Where did you find 'em?" said Coggan, turning round and leaping upon
the hedge without waiting for an answer.

"Under the eaves.  I knew where they were kept," said Gabriel,
following him.  "Coggan, you can ride bare-backed? there's no time to
look for saddles."

"Like a hero!" said Jan.

"Maryann, you go to bed," Gabriel shouted to her from the top of the
hedge.

Springing down into Boldwood's pastures, each pocketed his halter to
hide it from the horses, who, seeing the men empty-handed, docilely
allowed themselves to be seized by the mane, when the halters were
dexterously slipped on.  Having neither bit nor bridle, Oak and
Coggan extemporized the former by passing the rope in each case
through the animal's mouth and looping it on the other side.  Oak
vaulted astride, and Coggan clambered up by aid of the bank, when
they ascended to the gate and galloped off in the direction taken by
Bathsheba's horse and the robber.  Whose vehicle the horse had been
harnessed to was a matter of some uncertainty.

Weatherbury Bottom was reached in three or four minutes.  They
scanned the shady green patch by the roadside.  The gipsies were
gone.

"The villains!" said Gabriel.  "Which way have they gone, I wonder?"

"Straight on, as sure as God made little apples," said Jan.

"Very well; we are better mounted, and must overtake em", said Oak.
"Now on at full speed!"

No sound of the rider in their van could now be discovered.  The
road-metal grew softer and more clayey as Weatherbury was left
behind, and the late rain had wetted its surface to a somewhat
plastic, but not muddy state.  They came to cross-roads.  Coggan
suddenly pulled up Moll and slipped off.

"What's the matter?" said Gabriel.

"We must try to track 'em, since we can't hear 'em," said Jan,
fumbling in his pockets.  He struck a light, and held the match to
the ground.  The rain had been heavier here, and all foot and horse
tracks made previous to the storm had been abraded and blurred by
the drops, and they were now so many little scoops of water, which
reflected the flame of the match like eyes.  One set of tracks was
fresh and had no water in them; one pair of ruts was also empty,
and not small canals, like the others.  The footprints forming this
recent impression were full of information as to pace; they were in
equidistant pairs, three or four feet apart, the right and left foot
of each pair being exactly opposite one another.

"Straight on!" Jan exclaimed.  "Tracks like that mean a stiff gallop.
No wonder we don't hear him.  And the horse is harnessed--look at the
ruts.  Ay, that's our mare sure enough!"

"How do you know?"

"Old Jimmy Harris only shoed her last week, and I'd swear to his make
among ten thousand."

"The rest of the gipsies must ha' gone on earlier, or some other
way," said Oak.  "You saw there were no other tracks?"

"True." They rode along silently for a long weary time. Coggan
carried an old pinchbeck repeater which he had inherited from some
genius in his family; and it now struck one.  He lighted another
match, and examined the ground again.

"'Tis a canter now," he said, throwing away the light.  "A twisty,
rickety pace for a gig.  The fact is, they over-drove her at
starting; we shall catch 'em yet."

Again they hastened on, and entered Blackmore Vale.  Coggan's watch
struck one.  When they looked again the hoof-marks were so spaced as
to form a sort of zigzag if united, like the lamps along a street.

"That's a trot, I know," said Gabriel.

"Only a trot now," said Coggan, cheerfully.  "We shall overtake him
in time."

They pushed rapidly on for yet two or three miles.  "Ah! a moment,"
said Jan.  "Let's see how she was driven up this hill.  'Twill help
us."  A light was promptly struck upon his gaiters as before, and the
examination made.

"Hurrah!" said Coggan.  "She walked up here--and well she might.  We
shall get them in two miles, for a crown."

They rode three, and listened.  No sound was to be heard save a
millpond trickling hoarsely through a hatch, and suggesting gloomy
possibilities of drowning by jumping in.  Gabriel dismounted when
they came to a turning.  The tracks were absolutely the only guide as
to the direction that they now had, and great caution was necessary
to avoid confusing them with some others which had made their
appearance lately.

"What does this mean?--though I guess," said Gabriel, looking up
at Coggan as he moved the match over the ground about the turning.
Coggan, who, no less than the panting horses, had latterly shown
signs of weariness, again scrutinized the mystic characters.  This
time only three were of the regular horseshoe shape.  Every fourth
was a dot.

He screwed up his face and emitted a long "Whew-w-w!"

"Lame," said Oak.

"Yes.  Dainty is lamed; the near-foot-afore," said Coggan slowly,
staring still at the footprints.

"We'll push on," said Gabriel, remounting his humid steed.

Although the road along its greater part had been as good as any
turnpike-road in the country, it was nominally only a byway.  The
last turning had brought them into the high road leading to Bath.
Coggan recollected himself.

"We shall have him now!" he exclaimed.

"Where?"

"Sherton Turnpike.  The keeper of that gate is the sleepiest man
between here and London--Dan Randall, that's his name--knowed en for
years, when he was at Casterbridge gate. Between the lameness and the
gate 'tis a done job."

They now advanced with extreme caution.  Nothing was said until,
against a shady background of foliage, five white bars were visible,
crossing their route a little way ahead.

"Hush--we are almost close!" said Gabriel.

"Amble on upon the grass," said Coggan.

The white bars were blotted out in the midst by a dark shape in
front of them.  The silence of this lonely time was pierced by an
exclamation from that quarter.

"Hoy-a-hoy!  Gate!"

It appeared that there had been a previous call which they had not
noticed, for on their close approach the door of the turnpike-house
opened, and the keeper came out half-dressed, with a candle in his
hand.  The rays illumined the whole group.

"Keep the gate close!" shouted Gabriel.  "He has stolen the horse!"

"Who?" said the turnpike-man.

Gabriel looked at the driver of the gig, and saw a woman--Bathsheba,
his mistress.

On hearing his voice she had turned her face away from the light.
Coggan had, however, caught sight of her in the meanwhile.

"Why, 'tis mistress--I'll take my oath!" he said, amazed.

Bathsheba it certainly was, and she had by this time done the trick
she could do so well in crises not of love, namely, mask a surprise
by coolness of manner.

"Well, Gabriel," she inquired quietly, "where are you going?"

"We thought--" began Gabriel.

"I am driving to Bath," she said, taking for her own use the
assurance that Gabriel lacked.  "An important matter made it
necessary for me to give up my visit to Liddy, and go off at once.
What, then, were you following me?"

"We thought the horse was stole."

"Well--what a thing!  How very foolish of you not to know that I had
taken the trap and horse.  I could neither wake Maryann nor get into
the house, though I hammered for ten minutes against her window-sill.
Fortunately, I could get the key of the coach-house, so I troubled no
one further. Didn't you think it might be me?"

"Why should we, miss?"

"Perhaps not.  Why, those are never Farmer Boldwood's horses!
Goodness mercy! what have you been doing--bringing trouble upon me in
this way?  What! mustn't a lady move an inch from her door without
being dogged like a thief?"

"But how was we to know, if you left no account of your doings?"
expostulated Coggan, "and ladies don't drive at these hours, miss,
as a jineral rule of society."

"I did leave an account--and you would have seen it in the morning.
I wrote in chalk on the coach-house doors that I had come back for
the horse and gig, and driven off; that I could arouse nobody, and
should return soon."

"But you'll consider, ma'am, that we couldn't see that till it got
daylight."

"True," she said, and though vexed at first she had too much sense
to blame them long or seriously for a devotion to her that was as
valuable as it was rare.  She added with a very pretty grace, "Well,
I really thank you heartily for taking all this trouble; but I wish
you had borrowed anybody's horses but Mr. Boldwood's."

"Dainty is lame, miss," said Coggan.  "Can ye go on?"

"It was only a stone in her shoe.  I got down and pulled it out a
hundred yards back.  I can manage very well, thank you.  I shall be
in Bath by daylight.  Will you now return, please?"

She turned her head--the gateman's candle shimmering upon her quick,
clear eyes as she did so--passed through the gate, and was soon
wrapped in the embowering shades of mysterious summer boughs.  Coggan
and Gabriel put about their horses, and, fanned by the velvety air of
this July night, retraced the road by which they had come.

"A strange vagary, this of hers, isn't it, Oak?" said Coggan,
curiously.

"Yes," said Gabriel, shortly.

"She won't be in Bath by no daylight!"

"Coggan, suppose we keep this night's work as quiet as we can?"

"I am of one and the same mind."

"Very well.  We shall be home by three o'clock or so, and can creep
into the parish like lambs."

Bathsheba's perturbed meditations by the roadside had ultimately
evolved a conclusion that there were only two remedies for the
present desperate state of affairs.  The first was merely to
keep Troy away from Weatherbury till Boldwood's indignation had
cooled; the second to listen to Oak's entreaties, and Boldwood's
denunciations, and give up Troy altogether.

Alas!  Could she give up this new love--induce him to renounce her
by saying she did not like him--could no more speak to him, and beg
him, for her good, to end his furlough in Bath, and see her and
Weatherbury no more?

It was a picture full of misery, but for a while she contemplated it
firmly, allowing herself, nevertheless, as girls will, to dwell upon
the happy life she would have enjoyed had Troy been Boldwood, and the
path of love the path of duty--inflicting upon herself gratuitous
tortures by imagining him the lover of another woman after forgetting
her; for she had penetrated Troy's nature so far as to estimate his
tendencies pretty accurately, but unfortunately loved him no less in
thinking that he might soon cease to love her--indeed, considerably
more.

She jumped to her feet.  She would see him at once.  Yes, she would
implore him by word of mouth to assist her in this dilemma.  A letter
to keep him away could not reach him in time, even if he should be
disposed to listen to it.

Was Bathsheba altogether blind to the obvious fact that the support
of a lover's arms is not of a kind best calculated to assist a
resolve to renounce him?  Or was she sophistically sensible, with a
thrill of pleasure, that by adopting this course for getting rid of
him she was ensuring a meeting with him, at any rate, once more?

It was now dark, and the hour must have been nearly ten.  The only
way to accomplish her purpose was to give up her idea of visiting
Liddy at Yalbury, return to Weatherbury Farm, put the horse into
the gig, and drive at once to Bath.  The scheme seemed at first
impossible: the journey was a fearfully heavy one, even for a strong
horse, at her own estimate; and she much underrated the distance.
It was most venturesome for a woman, at night, and alone.

But could she go on to Liddy's and leave things to take their course?
No, no; anything but that.  Bathsheba was full of a stimulating
turbulence, beside which caution vainly prayed for a hearing.  She
turned back towards the village.

Her walk was slow, for she wished not to enter Weatherbury till the
cottagers were in bed, and, particularly, till Boldwood was secure.
Her plan was now to drive to Bath during the night, see Sergeant Troy
in the morning before he set out to come to her, bid him farewell,
and dismiss him: then to rest the horse thoroughly (herself to weep
the while, she thought), starting early the next morning on her
return journey.  By this arrangement she could trot Dainty gently
all the day, reach Liddy at Yalbury in the evening, and come home to
Weatherbury with her whenever they chose--so nobody would know she
had been to Bath at all.  Such was Bathsheba's scheme.  But in her
topographical ignorance as a late comer to the place, she misreckoned
the distance of her journey as not much more than half what it really
was.

This idea she proceeded to carry out, with what initial success we
have already seen.

IN THE SUN--A HARBINGER

A week passed, and there were no tidings of Bathsheba; nor was there
any explanation of her Gilpin's rig.

Then a note came for Maryann, stating that the business which had
called her mistress to Bath still detained her there; but that she
hoped to return in the course of another week.

Another week passed.  The oat-harvest began, and all the men were
a-field under a monochromatic Lammas sky, amid the trembling air
and short shadows of noon.  Indoors nothing was to be heard save
the droning of blue-bottle flies; out-of-doors the whetting of
scythes and the hiss of tressy oat-ears rubbing together as their
perpendicular stalks of amber-yellow fell heavily to each swath.
Every drop of moisture not in the men's bottles and flagons in the
form of cider was raining as perspiration from their foreheads and
cheeks.  Drought was everywhere else.

They were about to withdraw for a while into the charitable shade
of a tree in the fence, when Coggan saw a figure in a blue coat and
brass buttons running to them across the field.

"I wonder who that is?" he said.

"I hope nothing is wrong about mistress," said Maryann, who with some
other women was tying the bundles (oats being always sheafed on this
farm), "but an unlucky token came to me indoors this morning.  I
went to unlock the door and dropped the key, and it fell upon the
stone floor and broke into two pieces.  Breaking a key is a dreadful
bodement.  I wish mis'ess was home."

"'Tis Cain Ball," said Gabriel, pausing from whetting his reaphook.

Oak was not bound by his agreement to assist in the corn-field; but
the harvest month is an anxious time for a farmer, and the corn was
Bathsheba's, so he lent a hand.

"He's dressed up in his best clothes," said Matthew Moon.  "He hev
been away from home for a few days, since he's had that felon upon
his finger; for 'a said, since I can't work I'll have a hollerday."

"A good time for one--a' excellent time," said Joseph Poorgrass,
straightening his back; for he, like some of the others, had a way
of resting a while from his labour on such hot days for reasons
preternaturally small; of which Cain Ball's advent on a week-day in
his Sunday-clothes was one of the first magnitude.  "Twas a bad leg
allowed me to read the _Pilgrim's Progress_, and Mark Clark learnt
All-Fours in a whitlow."

"Ay, and my father put his arm out of joint to have time to go
courting," said Jan Coggan, in an eclipsing tone, wiping his face
with his shirt-sleeve and thrusting back his hat upon the nape of
his neck.

By this time Cainy was nearing the group of harvesters, and was
perceived to be carrying a large slice of bread and ham in one hand,
from which he took mouthfuls as he ran, the other being wrapped in a
bandage.  When he came close, his mouth assumed the bell shape, and
he began to cough violently.

"Now, Cainy!" said Gabriel, sternly.  "How many more times must I
tell you to keep from running so fast when you be eating?  You'll
choke yourself some day, that's what you'll do, Cain Ball."

"Hok-hok-hok!" replied Cain.  "A crumb of my victuals went the
wrong way--hok-hok!  That's what 'tis, Mister Oak!  And I've been
visiting to Bath because I had a felon on my thumb; yes, and I've
seen--ahok-hok!"

Directly Cain mentioned Bath, they all threw down their hooks and
forks and drew round him.  Unfortunately the erratic crumb did not
improve his narrative powers, and a supplementary hindrance was that
of a sneeze, jerking from his pocket his rather large watch, which
dangled in front of the young man pendulum-wise.

"Yes," he continued, directing his thoughts to Bath and letting his
eyes follow, "I've seed the world at last--yes--and I've seed our
mis'ess--ahok-hok-hok!"

"Bother the boy!" said Gabriel. "Something is always going the wrong
way down your throat, so that you can't tell what's necessary to be
told."

"Ahok! there!  Please, Mister Oak, a gnat have just fleed into my
stomach and brought the cough on again!"

"Yes, that's just it.  Your mouth is always open, you young rascal!"

"'Tis terrible bad to have a gnat fly down yer throat, pore boy!"
said Matthew Moon.

"Well, at Bath you saw--" prompted Gabriel.

"I saw our mistress," continued the junior shepherd, "and a sojer,
walking along.  And bymeby they got closer and closer, and then they
went arm-in-crook, like courting complete--hok-hok! like courting
complete--hok!--courting complete--"  Losing the thread of his
narrative at this point simultaneously with his loss of breath, their
informant looked up and down the field apparently for some clue to
it.  "Well, I see our mis'ess and a soldier--a-ha-a-wk!"

"Damn the boy!" said Gabriel.

"'Tis only my manner, Mister Oak, if ye'll excuse it," said Cain
Ball, looking reproachfully at Oak, with eyes drenched in their own
dew.

"Here's some cider for him--that'll cure his throat," said Jan
Coggan, lifting a flagon of cider, pulling out the cork, and applying
the hole to Cainy's mouth; Joseph Poorgrass in the meantime beginning
to think apprehensively of the serious consequences that would follow
Cainy Ball's strangulation in his cough, and the history of his Bath
adventures dying with him.

"For my poor self, I always say 'please God' afore I do anything,"
said Joseph, in an unboastful voice; "and so should you, Cain Ball.
'Tis a great safeguard, and might perhaps save you from being choked
to death some day."

Mr. Coggan poured the liquor with unstinted liberality at the
suffering Cain's circular mouth; half of it running down the side of
the flagon, and half of what reached his mouth running down outside
his throat, and half of what ran in going the wrong way, and being
coughed and sneezed around the persons of the gathered reapers in the
form of a cider fog, which for a moment hung in the sunny air like a
small exhalation.

"There's a great clumsy sneeze!  Why can't ye have better manners,
you young dog!" said Coggan, withdrawing the flagon.

"The cider went up my nose!" cried Cainy, as soon as he could speak;
"and now 'tis gone down my neck, and into my poor dumb felon, and
over my shiny buttons and all my best cloze!"

"The poor lad's cough is terrible unfortunate," said Matthew Moon.
"And a great history on hand, too.  Bump his back, shepherd."

"'Tis my nater," mourned Cain.  "Mother says I always was so
excitable when my feelings were worked up to a point!"

"True, true," said Joseph Poorgrass.  "The Balls were always a very
excitable family.  I knowed the boy's grandfather--a truly nervous
and modest man, even to genteel refinery. 'Twas blush, blush with
him, almost as much as 'tis with me--not but that 'tis a fault in
me!"

"Not at all, Master Poorgrass," said Coggan.  "'Tis a very noble
quality in ye."

"Heh-heh! well, I wish to noise nothing abroad--nothing at all,"
murmured Poorgrass, diffidently.  "But we be born to things--that's
true.  Yet I would rather my trifle were hid; though, perhaps, a high
nater is a little high, and at my birth all things were possible to
my Maker, and he may have begrudged no gifts....  But under your
bushel, Joseph! under your bushel with 'ee!  A strange desire,
neighbours, this desire to hide, and no praise due.  Yet there is a
Sermon on the Mount with a calendar of the blessed at the head, and
certain meek men may be named therein."

"Cainy's grandfather was a very clever man," said Matthew Moon.
"Invented a' apple-tree out of his own head, which is called by his
name to this day--the Early Ball.  You know 'em, Jan?  A Quarrenden
grafted on a Tom Putt, and a Rathe-ripe upon top o' that again.  'Tis
trew 'a used to bide about in a public-house wi' a 'ooman in a way he
had no business to by rights, but there--'a were a clever man in the
sense of the term."

"Now then," said Gabriel, impatiently, "what did you see, Cain?"

"I seed our mis'ess go into a sort of a park place, where there's
seats, and shrubs and flowers, arm-in-crook with a sojer," continued
Cainy, firmly, and with a dim sense that his words were very
effective as regarded Gabriel's emotions.  "And I think the sojer
was Sergeant Troy.  And they sat there together for more than
half-an-hour, talking moving things, and she once was crying a'most
to death. And when they came out her eyes were shining and she was
as white as a lily; and they looked into one another's faces, as
far-gone friendly as a man and woman can be."

Gabriel's features seemed to get thinner.  "Well, what did you see
besides?"

"Oh, all sorts."

"White as a lily?  You are sure 'twas she?"

"Yes."

"Well, what besides?"

"Great glass windows to the shops, and great clouds in the sky, full
of rain, and old wooden trees in the country round."

"You stun-poll!  What will ye say next?" said Coggan.

"Let en alone," interposed Joseph Poorgrass.  "The boy's meaning is
that the sky and the earth in the kingdom of Bath is not altogether
different from ours here.  'Tis for our good to gain knowledge of
strange cities, and as such the boy's words should be suffered, so
to speak it."

"And the people of Bath," continued Cain, "never need to light their
fires except as a luxury, for the water springs up out of the earth
ready boiled for use."

"'Tis true as the light," testified Matthew Moon. "I've heard other
navigators say the same thing."

"They drink nothing else there," said Cain, "and seem to enjoy it, to
see how they swaller it down."

"Well, it seems a barbarian practice enough to us, but I daresay the
natives think nothing o' it," said Matthew.

"And don't victuals spring up as well as drink?" asked Coggan,
twirling his eye.

"No--I own to a blot there in Bath--a true blot.  God didn't provide
'em with victuals as well as drink, and 'twas a drawback I couldn't
get over at all."

"Well, 'tis a curious place, to say the least," observed Moon; "and
it must be a curious people that live therein."

"Miss Everdene and the soldier were walking about together, you say?"
said Gabriel, returning to the group.

"Ay, and she wore a beautiful gold-colour silk gown, trimmed with
black lace, that would have stood alone 'ithout legs inside if
required.  'Twas a very winsome sight; and her hair was brushed
splendid.  And when the sun shone upon the bright gown and his red
coat--my! how handsome they looked.  You could see 'em all the
length of the street."

"And what then?" murmured Gabriel.

"And then I went into Griffin's to hae my boots hobbed, and then I
went to Riggs's batty-cake shop, and asked 'em for a penneth of the
cheapest and nicest stales, that were all but blue-mouldy, but not
quite.  And whilst I was chawing 'em down I walked on and seed a
clock with a face as big as a baking trendle--"

"But that's nothing to do with mistress!"

"I'm coming to that, if you'll leave me alone, Mister Oak!"
remonstrated Cainy.  "If you excites me, perhaps you'll bring on my
cough, and then I shan't be able to tell ye nothing."

"Yes--let him tell it his own way," said Coggan.

Gabriel settled into a despairing attitude of patience, and Cainy
went on:--

"And there were great large houses, and more people all the week long
than at Weatherbury club-walking on White Tuesdays.  And I went to
grand churches and chapels.  And how the parson would pray!  Yes; he
would kneel down and put up his hands together, and make the holy
gold rings on his fingers gleam and twinkle in yer eyes, that he'd
earned by praying so excellent well!--Ah yes, I wish I lived there."

"Our poor Parson Thirdly can't get no money to buy such rings," said
Matthew Moon, thoughtfully.  "And as good a man as ever walked.  I
don't believe poor Thirdly have a single one, even of humblest tin
or copper.  Such a great ornament as they'd be to him on a dull
afternoon, when he's up in the pulpit lighted by the wax candles!
But 'tis impossible, poor man.  Ah, to think how unequal things be."

"Perhaps he's made of different stuff than to wear 'em," said
Gabriel, grimly. "Well, that's enough of this.  Go on, Cainy--quick."

"Oh--and the new style of parsons wear moustaches and long beards,"
continued the illustrious traveller, "and look like Moses and Aaron
complete, and make we fokes in the congregation feel all over like
the children of Israel."

"A very right feeling--very," said Joseph Poorgrass.

"And there's two religions going on in the nation now--High Church
and High Chapel.  And, thinks I, I'll play fair; so I went to High
Church in the morning, and High Chapel in the afternoon."

"A right and proper boy," said Joseph Poorgrass.

"Well, at High Church they pray singing, and worship all the colours
of the rainbow; and at High Chapel they pray preaching, and worship
drab and whitewash only.  And then--I didn't see no more of Miss
Everdene at all."

"Why didn't you say so afore, then?" exclaimed Oak, with much
disappointment.

"Ah," said Matthew Moon, "she'll wish her cake dough if so be she's
over intimate with that man."

"She's not over intimate with him," said Gabriel, indignantly.

"She would know better," said Coggan.  "Our mis'ess has too much
sense under they knots of black hair to do such a mad thing."

"You see, he's not a coarse, ignorant man, for he was well brought
up," said Matthew, dubiously.  "'Twas only wildness that made him a
soldier, and maids rather like your man of sin."

"Now, Cain Ball," said Gabriel restlessly, "can you swear in the most
awful form that the woman you saw was Miss Everdene?"

"Cain Ball, you be no longer a babe and suckling," said Joseph in the
sepulchral tone the circumstances demanded, "and you know what taking
an oath is.  'Tis a horrible testament mind ye, which you say and
seal with your blood-stone, and the prophet Matthew tells us that on
whomsoever it shall fall it will grind him to powder.  Now, before
all the work-folk here assembled, can you swear to your words as the
shepherd asks ye?"

"Please no, Mister Oak!" said Cainy, looking from one to the other
with great uneasiness at the spiritual magnitude of the position.  "I
don't mind saying 'tis true, but I don't like to say 'tis damn true,
if that's what you mane."

"Cain, Cain, how can you!" asked Joseph sternly.  "You be asked to
swear in a holy manner, and you swear like wicked Shimei, the son of
Gera, who cursed as he came.  Young man, fie!"

"No, I don't!  'Tis you want to squander a pore boy's soul, Joseph
Poorgrass--that's what 'tis!" said Cain, beginning to cry.  "All I
mane is that in common truth 'twas Miss Everdene and Sergeant Troy,
but in the horrible so-help-me truth that ye want to make of it
perhaps 'twas somebody else!"

"There's no getting at the rights of it," said Gabriel, turning to
his work.

"Cain Ball, you'll come to a bit of bread!" groaned Joseph Poorgrass.

Then the reapers' hooks were flourished again, and the old sounds
went on.  Gabriel, without making any pretence of being lively, did
nothing to show that he was particularly dull.  However, Coggan knew
pretty nearly how the land lay, and when they were in a nook together
he said--

"Don't take on about her, Gabriel.  What difference does it make
whose sweetheart she is, since she can't be yours?"

"That's the very thing I say to myself," said Gabriel.

HOME AGAIN--A TRICKSTER

That same evening at dusk Gabriel was leaning over Coggan's
garden-gate, taking an up-and-down survey before retiring to rest.

A vehicle of some kind was softly creeping along the grassy margin of
the lane.  From it spread the tones of two women talking.  The tones
were natural and not at all suppressed. Oak instantly knew the voices
to be those of Bathsheba and Liddy.

The carriage came opposite and passed by.  It was Miss Everdene's
gig, and Liddy and her mistress were the only occupants of the seat.
Liddy was asking questions about the city of Bath, and her companion
was answering them listlessly and unconcernedly.  Both Bathsheba and
the horse seemed weary.

The exquisite relief of finding that she was here again, safe and
sound, overpowered all reflection, and Oak could only luxuriate in
the sense of it.  All grave reports were forgotten.

He lingered and lingered on, till there was no difference between the
eastern and western expanses of sky, and the timid hares began to
limp courageously round the dim hillocks.  Gabriel might have been
there an additional half-hour when a dark form walked slowly by.
"Good-night, Gabriel," the passer said.

It was Boldwood.  "Good-night, sir," said Gabriel.

Boldwood likewise vanished up the road, and Oak shortly afterwards
turned indoors to bed.

Farmer Boldwood went on towards Miss Everdene's house.  He reached
the front, and approaching the entrance, saw a light in the parlour.
The blind was not drawn down, and inside the room was Bathsheba,
looking over some papers or letters.  Her back was towards Boldwood.
He went to the door, knocked, and waited with tense muscles and an
aching brow.

Boldwood had not been outside his garden since his meeting with
Bathsheba in the road to Yalbury.  Silent and alone, he had remained
in moody meditation on woman's ways, deeming as essentials of the
whole sex the accidents of the single one of their number he had ever
closely beheld.  By degrees a more charitable temper had pervaded
him, and this was the reason of his sally to-night.  He had come to
apologize and beg forgiveness of Bathsheba with something like a
sense of shame at his violence, having but just now learnt that she
had returned--only from a visit to Liddy, as he supposed, the Bath
escapade being quite unknown to him.

He inquired for Miss Everdene.  Liddy's manner was odd, but he did
not notice it.  She went in, leaving him standing there, and in her
absence the blind of the room containing Bathsheba was pulled down.
Boldwood augured ill from that sign.  Liddy came out.

"My mistress cannot see you, sir," she said.

The farmer instantly went out by the gate.  He was unforgiven--that
was the issue of it all.  He had seen her who was to him
simultaneously a delight and a torture, sitting in the room he had
shared with her as a peculiarly privileged guest only a little
earlier in the summer, and she had denied him an entrance there now.

Boldwood did not hurry homeward.  It was ten o'clock at least, when,
walking deliberately through the lower part of Weatherbury, he heard
the carrier's spring van entering the village.  The van ran to and
from a town in a northern direction, and it was owned and driven by
a Weatherbury man, at the door of whose house it now pulled up.  The
lamp fixed to the head of the hood illuminated a scarlet and gilded
form, who was the first to alight.

"Ah!" said Boldwood to himself, "come to see her again."

Troy entered the carrier's house, which had been the place of his
lodging on his last visit to his native place.  Boldwood was moved
by a sudden determination.  He hastened home.  In ten minutes he was
back again, and made as if he were going to call upon Troy at the
carrier's.  But as he approached, some one opened the door and came
out.  He heard this person say "Good-night" to the inmates, and the
voice was Troy's.  This was strange, coming so immediately after
his arrival.  Boldwood, however, hastened up to him.  Troy had what
appeared to be a carpet-bag in his hand--the same that he had brought
with him.  It seemed as if he were going to leave again this very
night.

Troy turned up the hill and quickened his pace.  Boldwood stepped
forward.

"Sergeant Troy?"

"Yes--I'm Sergeant Troy."

"Just arrived from up the country, I think?"

"Just arrived from Bath."

"I am William Boldwood."

"Indeed."

The tone in which this word was uttered was all that had been wanted
to bring Boldwood to the point.

"I wish to speak a word with you," he said.

"What about?"

"About her who lives just ahead there--and about a woman you have
wronged."

"I wonder at your impertinence," said Troy, moving on.

"Now look here," said Boldwood, standing in front of him, "wonder or
not, you are going to hold a conversation with me."

Troy heard the dull determination in Boldwood's voice, looked at his
stalwart frame, then at the thick cudgel he carried in his hand.  He
remembered it was past ten o'clock. It seemed worth while to be civil
to Boldwood.

"Very well, I'll listen with pleasure," said Troy, placing his bag on
the ground, "only speak low, for somebody or other may overhear us in
the farmhouse there."

"Well then--I know a good deal concerning your Fanny Robin's
attachment to you.  I may say, too, that I believe I am the only
person in the village, excepting Gabriel Oak, who does know it.  You
ought to marry her."

"I suppose I ought.  Indeed, I wish to, but I cannot."

"Why?"

Troy was about to utter something hastily; he then checked himself
and said, "I am too poor."  His voice was changed.  Previously it had
had a devil-may-care tone.  It was the voice of a trickster now.

Boldwood's present mood was not critical enough to notice tones.  He
continued, "I may as well speak plainly; and understand, I don't
wish to enter into the questions of right or wrong, woman's honour
and shame, or to express any opinion on your conduct.  I intend a
business transaction with you."

"I see," said Troy.  "Suppose we sit down here."

An old tree trunk lay under the hedge immediately opposite, and they
sat down.

"I was engaged to be married to Miss Everdene," said Boldwood, "but
you came and--"

"Not engaged," said Troy.

"As good as engaged."

"If I had not turned up she might have become engaged to you."

"Hang might!"

"Would, then."

"If you had not come I should certainly--yes, CERTAINLY--have been
accepted by this time.  If you had not seen her you might have been
married to Fanny.  Well, there's too much difference between Miss
Everdene's station and your own for this flirtation with her ever to
benefit you by ending in marriage.  So all I ask is, don't molest her
any more. Marry Fanny.  I'll make it worth your while."

"How will you?"

"I'll pay you well now, I'll settle a sum of money upon her, and
I'll see that you don't suffer from poverty in the future.  I'll put
it clearly.  Bathsheba is only playing with you: you are too poor
for her as I said; so give up wasting your time about a great match
you'll never make for a moderate and rightful match you may make
to-morrow; take up your carpet-bag, turn about, leave Weatherbury
now, this night, and you shall take fifty pounds with you.  Fanny
shall have fifty to enable her to prepare for the wedding, when you
have told me where she is living, and she shall have five hundred
paid down on her wedding-day."

In making this statement Boldwood's voice revealed only too clearly
a consciousness of the weakness of his position, his aims, and his
method.  His manner had lapsed quite from that of the firm and
dignified Boldwood of former times; and such a scheme as he had now
engaged in he would have condemned as childishly imbecile only a few
months ago.  We discern a grand force in the lover which he lacks
whilst a free man; but there is a breadth of vision in the free
man which in the lover we vainly seek.  Where there is much bias
there must be some narrowness, and love, though added emotion, is
subtracted capacity.  Boldwood exemplified this to an abnormal
degree: he knew nothing of Fanny Robin's circumstances or
whereabouts, he knew nothing of Troy's possibilities, yet that was
what he said.

"I like Fanny best," said Troy; "and if, as you say, Miss Everdene is
out of my reach, why I have all to gain by accepting your money, and
marrying Fan.  But she's only a servant."

"Never mind--do you agree to my arrangement?"

"I do."

"Ah!" said Boldwood, in a more elastic voice.  "Oh, Troy, if you like
her best, why then did you step in here and injure my happiness?"

"I love Fanny best now," said Troy.  "But Bathsh--Miss Everdene
inflamed me, and displaced Fanny for a time.  It is over now."

"Why should it be over so soon?  And why then did you come here
again?"

"There are weighty reasons.  Fifty pounds at once, you said!"

"I did," said Boldwood, "and here they are--fifty sovereigns." He
handed Troy a small packet.

"You have everything ready--it seems that you calculated on my
accepting them," said the sergeant, taking the packet.

"I thought you might accept them," said Boldwood.

"You've only my word that the programme shall be adhered to, whilst
I at any rate have fifty pounds."

"I had thought of that, and I have considered that if I can't appeal
to your honour I can trust to your--well, shrewdness we'll call
it--not to lose five hundred pounds in prospect, and also make a
bitter enemy of a man who is willing to be an extremely useful
friend."

"Stop, listen!" said Troy in a whisper.

A light pit-pat was audible upon the road just above them.

"By George--'tis she," he continued.  "I must go on and meet her."

"She--who?"

"Bathsheba."

"Bathsheba--out alone at this time o' night!" said Boldwood in
amazement, and starting up. "Why must you meet her?"

"She was expecting me to-night--and I must now speak to her, and wish
her good-bye, according to your wish."

"I don't see the necessity of speaking."

"It can do no harm--and she'll be wandering about looking for me if
I don't.  You shall hear all I say to her.  It will help you in your
love-making when I am gone."

"Your tone is mocking."

"Oh no.  And remember this, if she does not know what has become of
me, she will think more about me than if I tell her flatly I have
come to give her up."

"Will you confine your words to that one point?--Shall I hear every
word you say?"

"Every word.  Now sit still there, and hold my carpet bag for me, and
mark what you hear."

The light footstep came closer, halting occasionally, as if the
walker listened for a sound.  Troy whistled a double note in a soft,
fluty tone.

"Come to that, is it!" murmured Boldwood, uneasily.

"You promised silence," said Troy.

"I promise again."

Troy stepped forward.

"Frank, dearest, is that you?" The tones were Bathsheba's.

"O God!" said Boldwood.

"Yes," said Troy to her.

"How late you are," she continued, tenderly.  "Did you come by the
carrier?  I listened and heard his wheels entering the village, but
it was some time ago, and I had almost given you up, Frank."

"I was sure to come," said Frank.  "You knew I should, did you not?"

"Well, I thought you would," she said, playfully; "and, Frank, it
is so lucky!  There's not a soul in my house but me to-night.  I've
packed them all off so nobody on earth will know of your visit to
your lady's bower.  Liddy wanted to go to her grandfather's to tell
him about her holiday, and I said she might stay with them till
to-morrow--when you'll be gone again."

"Capital," said Troy.  "But, dear me, I had better go back for my
bag, because my slippers and brush and comb are in it; you run home
whilst I fetch it, and I'll promise to be in your parlour in ten
minutes."

"Yes." She turned and tripped up the hill again.

During the progress of this dialogue there was a nervous twitching
of Boldwood's tightly closed lips, and his face became bathed in a
clammy dew.  He now started forward towards Troy.  Troy turned to
him and took up the bag.

"Shall I tell her I have come to give her up and cannot marry her?"
said the soldier, mockingly.

"No, no; wait a minute.  I want to say more to you--more to you!"
said Boldwood, in a hoarse whisper.

"Now," said Troy, "you see my dilemma.  Perhaps I am a bad man--the
victim of my impulses--led away to do what I ought to leave undone.
I can't, however, marry them both.  And I have two reasons for
choosing Fanny.  First, I like her best upon the whole, and second,
you make it worth my while."

At the same instant Boldwood sprang upon him, and held him by the
neck.  Troy felt Boldwood's grasp slowly tightening. The move was
absolutely unexpected.

"A moment," he gasped.  "You are injuring her you love!"

"Well, what do you mean?" said the farmer.

"Give me breath," said Troy.

Boldwood loosened his hand, saying, "By Heaven, I've a mind to kill
you!"

"And ruin her."

"Save her."

"Oh, how can she be saved now, unless I marry her?"

Boldwood groaned.  He reluctantly released the soldier, and flung him
back against the hedge.  "Devil, you torture me!" said he.

Troy rebounded like a ball, and was about to make a dash at the
farmer; but he checked himself, saying lightly--

"It is not worth while to measure my strength with you.  Indeed it
is a barbarous way of settling a quarrel.  I shall shortly leave the
army because of the same conviction.  Now after that revelation of
how the land lies with Bathsheba, 'twould be a mistake to kill me,
would it not?"

"'Twould be a mistake to kill you," repeated Boldwood, mechanically,
with a bowed head.

"Better kill yourself."

"Far better."

"I'm glad you see it."

"Troy, make her your wife, and don't act upon what I arranged just
now.  The alternative is dreadful, but take Bathsheba; I give her up!
She must love you indeed to sell soul and body to you so utterly as
she has done.  Wretched woman--deluded woman--you are, Bathsheba!"

"But about Fanny?"

"Bathsheba is a woman well to do," continued Boldwood, in nervous
anxiety, "and, Troy, she will make a good wife; and, indeed, she is
worth your hastening on your marriage with her!"

"But she has a will--not to say a temper, and I shall be a mere slave
to her.  I could do anything with poor Fanny Robin."

"Troy," said Boldwood, imploringly, "I'll do anything for you, only
don't desert her; pray don't desert her, Troy."

"Which, poor Fanny?"

"No; Bathsheba Everdene.  Love her best!  Love her tenderly!  How
shall I get you to see how advantageous it will be to you to secure
her at once?"

"I don't wish to secure her in any new way."

Boldwood's arm moved spasmodically towards Troy's person again.  He
repressed the instinct, and his form drooped as with pain.

Troy went on--

"I shall soon purchase my discharge, and then--"

"But I wish you to hasten on this marriage!  It will be better for
you both.  You love each other, and you must let me help you to do
it."

"How?"

"Why, by settling the five hundred on Bathsheba instead of Fanny, to
enable you to marry at once.  No; she wouldn't have it of me.  I'll
pay it down to you on the wedding-day."

Troy paused in secret amazement at Boldwood's wild infatuation.  He
carelessly said, "And am I to have anything now?"

"Yes, if you wish to.  But I have not much additional money with me.
I did not expect this; but all I have is yours."

Boldwood, more like a somnambulist than a wakeful man, pulled out the
large canvas bag he carried by way of a purse, and searched it.

"I have twenty-one pounds more with me," he said.  "Two notes and a
sovereign.  But before I leave you I must have a paper signed--"

"Pay me the money, and we'll go straight to her parlour, and make any
arrangement you please to secure my compliance with your wishes.  But
she must know nothing of this cash business."

"Nothing, nothing," said Boldwood, hastily.  "Here is the sum, and
if you'll come to my house we'll write out the agreement for the
remainder, and the terms also."

"First we'll call upon her."

"But why?  Come with me to-night, and go with me to-morrow to the
surrogate's."

"But she must be consulted; at any rate informed."

"Very well; go on."

They went up the hill to Bathsheba's house.  When they stood at the
entrance, Troy said, "Wait here a moment."  Opening the door, he
glided inside, leaving the door ajar.

Boldwood waited.  In two minutes a light appeared in the passage.
Boldwood then saw that the chain had been fastened across the door.
Troy appeared inside, carrying a bedroom candlestick.

"What, did you think I should break in?" said Boldwood,
contemptuously.

"Oh, no, it is merely my humour to secure things.  Will you read this
a moment?  I'll hold the light."

Troy handed a folded newspaper through the slit between door and
doorpost, and put the candle close.  "That's the paragraph," he said,
placing his finger on a line.

Boldwood looked and read--

   MARRIAGES.

   On the 17th inst., at St. Ambrose's Church, Bath, by the
   Rev. G. Mincing, B.A., Francis Troy, only son of the late
   Edward Troy, Esq., M.D., of Weatherbury, and sergeant with
   Dragoon Guards, to Bathsheba, only surviving daughter of
   the late Mr. John Everdene, of Casterbridge.

"This may be called Fort meeting Feeble, hey, Boldwood?" said Troy.
A low gurgle of derisive laughter followed the words.

The paper fell from Boldwood's hands.  Troy continued--

"Fifty pounds to marry Fanny.  Good.  Twenty-one pounds not to marry
Fanny, but Bathsheba.  Good.  Finale: already Bathsheba's husband.
Now, Boldwood, yours is the ridiculous fate which always attends
interference between a man and his wife.  And another word.  Bad as I
am, I am not such a villain as to make the marriage or misery of any
woman a matter of huckster and sale.  Fanny has long ago left me.  I
don't know where she is.  I have searched everywhere.  Another word
yet.  You say you love Bathsheba; yet on the merest apparent evidence
you instantly believe in her dishonour.  A fig for such love!  Now
that I've taught you a lesson, take your money back again."

"I will not; I will not!" said Boldwood, in a hiss.

"Anyhow I won't have it," said Troy, contemptuously.  He wrapped the
packet of gold in the notes, and threw the whole into the road.

Boldwood shook his clenched fist at him.  "You juggler of Satan!  You
black hound!  But I'll punish you yet; mark me, I'll punish you yet!"

Another peal of laughter.  Troy then closed the door, and locked
himself in.

Throughout the whole of that night Boldwood's dark form might have
been seen walking about the hills and downs of Weatherbury like an
unhappy Shade in the Mournful Fields by Acheron.

AT AN UPPER WINDOW

It was very early the next morning--a time of sun and dew.  The
confused beginnings of many birds' songs spread into the healthy air,
and the wan blue of the heaven was here and there coated with thin
webs of incorporeal cloud which were of no effect in obscuring day.
All the lights in the scene were yellow as to colour, and all the
shadows were attenuated as to form.  The creeping plants about the
old manor-house were bowed with rows of heavy water drops, which
had upon objects behind them the effect of minute lenses of high
magnifying power.

Just before the clock struck five Gabriel Oak and Coggan passed the
village cross, and went on together to the fields.  They were yet
barely in view of their mistress's house, when Oak fancied he saw the
opening of a casement in one of the upper windows.  The two men were
at this moment partially screened by an elder bush, now beginning
to be enriched with black bunches of fruit, and they paused before
emerging from its shade.

A handsome man leaned idly from the lattice.  He looked east and then
west, in the manner of one who makes a first morning survey.  The
man was Sergeant Troy.  His red jacket was loosely thrown on, but
not buttoned, and he had altogether the relaxed bearing of a soldier
taking his ease.

Coggan spoke first, looking quietly at the window.

"She has married him!" he said.

Gabriel had previously beheld the sight, and he now stood with his
back turned, making no reply.

"I fancied we should know something to-day," continued Coggan.  "I
heard wheels pass my door just after dark--you were out somewhere."
He glanced round upon Gabriel.  "Good heavens above us, Oak, how
white your face is; you look like a corpse!"

"Do I?" said Oak, with a faint smile.

"Lean on the gate: I'll wait a bit."

"All right, all right."

They stood by the gate awhile, Gabriel listlessly staring at the
ground.  His mind sped into the future, and saw there enacted in
years of leisure the scenes of repentance that would ensue from this
work of haste.  That they were married he had instantly decided.  Why
had it been so mysteriously managed?  It had become known that she
had had a fearful journey to Bath, owing to her miscalculating the
distance: that the horse had broken down, and that she had been more
than two days getting there.  It was not Bathsheba's way to do things
furtively.  With all her faults, she was candour itself.  Could she
have been entrapped?  The union was not only an unutterable grief to
him: it amazed him, notwithstanding that he had passed the preceding
week in a suspicion that such might be the issue of Troy's meeting
her away from home.  Her quiet return with Liddy had to some extent
dispersed the dread.  Just as that imperceptible motion which appears
like stillness is infinitely divided in its properties from stillness
itself, so had his hope undistinguishable from despair differed from
despair indeed.

In a few minutes they moved on again towards the house.  The sergeant
still looked from the window.

"Morning, comrades!" he shouted, in a cheery voice, when they came
up.

Coggan replied to the greeting.  "Bain't ye going to answer the man?"
he then said to Gabriel.  "I'd say good morning--you needn't spend a
hapenny of meaning upon it, and yet keep the man civil."

Gabriel soon decided too that, since the deed was done, to put the
best face upon the matter would be the greatest kindness to her he
loved.

"Good morning, Sergeant Troy," he returned, in a ghastly voice.

"A rambling, gloomy house this," said Troy, smiling.

"Why--they MAY not be married!" suggested Coggan.  "Perhaps she's not
there."

Gabriel shook his head.  The soldier turned a little towards the
east, and the sun kindled his scarlet coat to an orange glow.

"But it is a nice old house," responded Gabriel.

"Yes--I suppose so; but I feel like new wine in an old bottle here.
My notion is that sash-windows should be put throughout, and these
old wainscoted walls brightened up a bit; or the oak cleared quite
away, and the walls papered."

"It would be a pity, I think."

"Well, no.  A philosopher once said in my hearing that the old
builders, who worked when art was a living thing, had no respect
for the work of builders who went before them, but pulled down and
altered as they thought fit; and why shouldn't we?  'Creation and
preservation don't do well together,' says he, 'and a million of
antiquarians can't invent a style.' My mind exactly.  I am for making
this place more modern, that we may be cheerful whilst we can."

The military man turned and surveyed the interior of the room, to
assist his ideas of improvement in this direction.  Gabriel and
Coggan began to move on.

"Oh, Coggan," said Troy, as if inspired by a recollection "do you
know if insanity has ever appeared in Mr. Boldwood's family?"

Jan reflected for a moment.

"I once heard that an uncle of his was queer in his head, but I don't
know the rights o't," he said.

"It is of no importance," said Troy, lightly.  "Well, I shall be down
in the fields with you some time this week; but I have a few matters
to attend to first.  So good-day to you.  We shall, of course, keep
on just as friendly terms as usual.  I'm not a proud man: nobody is
ever able to say that of Sergeant Troy.  However, what is must be,
and here's half-a-crown to drink my health, men."

Troy threw the coin dexterously across the front plot and over the
fence towards Gabriel, who shunned it in its fall, his face turning
to an angry red.  Coggan twirled his eye, edged forward, and caught
the money in its ricochet upon the road.

"Very well--you keep it, Coggan," said Gabriel with disdain and
almost fiercely.  "As for me, I'll do without gifts from him!"

"Don't show it too much," said Coggan, musingly.  "For if he's
married to her, mark my words, he'll buy his discharge and be our
master here.  Therefore 'tis well to say 'Friend' outwardly, though
you say 'Troublehouse' within."

"Well--perhaps it is best to be silent; but I can't go further than
that.  I can't flatter, and if my place here is only to be kept by
smoothing him down, my place must be lost."

A horseman, whom they had for some time seen in the distance, now
appeared close beside them.

"There's Mr. Boldwood," said Oak.  "I wonder what Troy meant by his
question."

Coggan and Oak nodded respectfully to the farmer, just checked their
paces to discover if they were wanted, and finding they were not
stood back to let him pass on.

The only signs of the terrible sorrow Boldwood had been combating
through the night, and was combating now, were the want of colour
in his well-defined face, the enlarged appearance of the veins in
his forehead and temples, and the sharper lines about his mouth.
The horse bore him away, and the very step of the animal seemed
significant of dogged despair.  Gabriel, for a minute, rose above his
own grief in noticing Boldwood's.  He saw the square figure sitting
erect upon the horse, the head turned to neither side, the elbows
steady by the hips, the brim of the hat level and undisturbed in
its onward glide, until the keen edges of Boldwood's shape sank by
degrees over the hill.  To one who knew the man and his story there
was something more striking in this immobility than in a collapse.
The clash of discord between mood and matter here was forced
painfully home to the heart; and, as in laughter there are more
dreadful phases than in tears, so was there in the steadiness of
this agonized man an expression deeper than a cry.

WEALTH IN JEOPARDY--THE REVEL

One night, at the end of August, when Bathsheba's experiences as a
married woman were still new, and when the weather was yet dry and
sultry, a man stood motionless in the stockyard of Weatherbury Upper
Farm, looking at the moon and sky.

The night had a sinister aspect.  A heated breeze from the south
slowly fanned the summits of lofty objects, and in the sky dashes
of buoyant cloud were sailing in a course at right angles to that
of another stratum, neither of them in the direction of the breeze
below.  The moon, as seen through these films, had a lurid metallic
look.  The fields were sallow with the impure light, and all were
tinged in monochrome, as if beheld through stained glass.  The same
evening the sheep had trailed homeward head to tail, the behaviour of
the rooks had been confused, and the horses had moved with timidity
and caution.

Thunder was imminent, and, taking some secondary appearances into
consideration, it was likely to be followed by one of the lengthened
rains which mark the close of dry weather for the season.  Before
twelve hours had passed a harvest atmosphere would be a bygone thing.

Oak gazed with misgiving at eight naked and unprotected ricks,
massive and heavy with the rich produce of one-half the farm for
that year.  He went on to the barn.

This was the night which had been selected by Sergeant Troy--ruling
now in the room of his wife--for giving the harvest supper and dance.
As Oak approached the building the sound of violins and a tambourine,
and the regular jigging of many feet, grew more distinct.  He came
close to the large doors, one of which stood slightly ajar, and
looked in.

The central space, together with the recess at one end, was emptied
of all incumbrances, and this area, covering about two-thirds of
the whole, was appropriated for the gathering, the remaining end,
which was piled to the ceiling with oats, being screened off with
sail-cloth.  Tufts and garlands of green foliage decorated the walls,
beams, and extemporized chandeliers, and immediately opposite to Oak
a rostrum had been erected, bearing a table and chairs.  Here sat
three fiddlers, and beside them stood a frantic man with his hair
on end, perspiration streaming down his cheeks, and a tambourine
quivering in his hand.

The dance ended, and on the black oak floor in the midst a new row of
couples formed for another.

"Now, ma'am, and no offence I hope, I ask what dance you would like
next?" said the first violin.

"Really, it makes no difference," said the clear voice of Bathsheba,
who stood at the inner end of the building, observing the scene from
behind a table covered with cups and viands.  Troy was lolling beside
her.

"Then," said the fiddler, "I'll venture to name that the right and
proper thing is 'The Soldier's Joy'--there being a gallant soldier
married into the farm--hey, my sonnies, and gentlemen all?"

"It shall be 'The Soldier's Joy,'" exclaimed a chorus.

"Thanks for the compliment," said the sergeant gaily, taking
Bathsheba by the hand and leading her to the top of the dance.  "For
though I have purchased my discharge from Her Most Gracious Majesty's
regiment of cavalry the 11th Dragoon Guards, to attend to the new
duties awaiting me here, I shall continue a soldier in spirit and
feeling as long as I live."

So the dance began.  As to the merits of "The Soldier's Joy," there
cannot be, and never were, two opinions.  It has been observed in the
musical circles of Weatherbury and its vicinity that this melody, at
the end of three-quarters of an hour of thunderous footing, still
possesses more stimulative properties for the heel and toe than the
majority of other dances at their first opening.  "The Soldier's Joy"
has, too, an additional charm, in being so admirably adapted to the
tambourine aforesaid--no mean instrument in the hands of a performer
who understands the proper convulsions, spasms, St. Vitus's dances,
and fearful frenzies necessary when exhibiting its tones in their
highest perfection.

The immortal tune ended, a fine DD rolling forth from the bass-viol
with the sonorousness of a cannonade, and Gabriel delayed his entry
no longer.  He avoided Bathsheba, and got as near as possible
to the platform, where Sergeant Troy was now seated, drinking
brandy-and-water, though the others drank without exception cider and
ale. Gabriel could not easily thrust himself within speaking distance
of the sergeant, and he sent a message, asking him to come down for a
moment.  The sergeant said he could not attend.

"Will you tell him, then," said Gabriel, "that I only stepped ath'art
to say that a heavy rain is sure to fall soon, and that something
should be done to protect the ricks?"

"Mr. Troy says it will not rain," returned the messenger, "and he
cannot stop to talk to you about such fidgets."

In juxtaposition with Troy, Oak had a melancholy tendency to look
like a candle beside gas, and ill at ease, he went out again,
thinking he would go home; for, under the circumstances, he had no
heart for the scene in the barn.  At the door he paused for a moment:
Troy was speaking.

"Friends, it is not only the harvest home that we are celebrating
to-night; but this is also a Wedding Feast.  A short time ago I had
the happiness to lead to the altar this lady, your mistress, and not
until now have we been able to give any public flourish to the event
in Weatherbury.  That it may be thoroughly well done, and that every
man may go happy to bed, I have ordered to be brought here some
bottles of brandy and kettles of hot water.  A treble-strong goblet
will be handed round to each guest."

Bathsheba put her hand upon his arm, and, with upturned pale face,
said imploringly, "No--don't give it to them--pray don't, Frank!  It
will only do them harm: they have had enough of everything."

"True--we don't wish for no more, thank ye," said one or two.

"Pooh!" said the sergeant contemptuously, and raised his voice as
if lighted up by a new idea.  "Friends," he said, "we'll send the
women-folk home!  'Tis time they were in bed.  Then we cockbirds will
have a jolly carouse to ourselves!  If any of the men show the white
feather, let them look elsewhere for a winter's work."

Bathsheba indignantly left the barn, followed by all the women and
children.  The musicians, not looking upon themselves as "company,"
slipped quietly away to their spring waggon and put in the horse.
Thus Troy and the men on the farm were left sole occupants of the
place.  Oak, not to appear unnecessarily disagreeable, stayed a
little while; then he, too, arose and quietly took his departure,
followed by a friendly oath from the sergeant for not staying to a
second round of grog.

Gabriel proceeded towards his home.  In approaching the door, his
toe kicked something which felt and sounded soft, leathery, and
distended, like a boxing-glove.  It was a large toad humbly
travelling across the path.  Oak took it up, thinking it might be
better to kill the creature to save it from pain; but finding it
uninjured, he placed it again among the grass.  He knew what this
direct message from the Great Mother meant.  And soon came another.

When he struck a light indoors there appeared upon the table a thin
glistening streak, as if a brush of varnish had been lightly dragged
across it.  Oak's eyes followed the serpentine sheen to the other
side, where it led up to a huge brown garden-slug, which had come
indoors to-night for reasons of its own.  It was Nature's second way
of hinting to him that he was to prepare for foul weather.

Oak sat down meditating for nearly an hour.  During this time two
black spiders, of the kind common in thatched houses, promenaded the
ceiling, ultimately dropping to the floor.  This reminded him that
if there was one class of manifestation on this matter that he
thoroughly understood, it was the instincts of sheep.  He left the
room, ran across two or three fields towards the flock, got upon a
hedge, and looked over among them.

They were crowded close together on the other side around some furze
bushes, and the first peculiarity observable was that, on the sudden
appearance of Oak's head over the fence, they did not stir or run
away.  They had now a terror of something greater than their terror
of man.  But this was not the most noteworthy feature: they were all
grouped in such a way that their tails, without a single exception,
were towards that half of the horizon from which the storm
threatened.  There was an inner circle closely huddled, and outside
these they radiated wider apart, the pattern formed by the flock as a
whole not being unlike a vandyked lace collar, to which the clump of
furze-bushes stood in the position of a wearer's neck.

This was enough to re-establish him in his original opinion.  He knew
now that he was right, and that Troy was wrong. Every voice in nature
was unanimous in bespeaking change.  But two distinct translations
attached to these dumb expressions.  Apparently there was to be a
thunder-storm, and afterwards a cold continuous rain.  The creeping
things seemed to know all about the later rain, but little of the
interpolated thunder-storm; whilst the sheep knew all about the
thunder-storm and nothing of the later rain.

This complication of weathers being uncommon, was all the more to be
feared.  Oak returned to the stack-yard.  All was silent here, and
the conical tips of the ricks jutted darkly into the sky.  There were
five wheat-ricks in this yard, and three stacks of barley.  The wheat
when threshed would average about thirty quarters to each stack; the
barley, at least forty.  Their value to Bathsheba, and indeed to
anybody, Oak mentally estimated by the following simple
calculation:--

      5 x 30 = 150 quarters = 500 L.
      3 x 40 = 120 quarters = 250 L.
                            -------
                    Total . . 750 L.

Seven hundred and fifty pounds in the divinest form that money can
wear--that of necessary food for man and beast: should the risk be
run of deteriorating this bulk of corn to less than half its value,
because of the instability of a woman?  "Never, if I can prevent it!"
said Gabriel.

Such was the argument that Oak set outwardly before him.  But man,
even to himself, is a palimpsest, having an ostensible writing, and
another beneath the lines.  It is possible that there was this golden
legend under the utilitarian one: "I will help to my last effort the
woman I have loved so dearly."

He went back to the barn to endeavour to obtain assistance for
covering the ricks that very night.  All was silent within, and he
would have passed on in the belief that the party had broken up, had
not a dim light, yellow as saffron by contrast with the greenish
whiteness outside, streamed through a knot-hole in the folding doors.

Gabriel looked in.  An unusual picture met his eye.

The candles suspended among the evergreens had burnt down to their
sockets, and in some cases the leaves tied about them were scorched.
Many of the lights had quite gone out, others smoked and stank,
grease dropping from them upon the floor.  Here, under the table, and
leaning against forms and chairs in every conceivable attitude except
the perpendicular, were the wretched persons of all the work-folk,
the hair of their heads at such low levels being suggestive of mops
and brooms.  In the midst of these shone red and distinct the figure
of Sergeant Troy, leaning back in a chair.  Coggan was on his back,
with his mouth open, huzzing forth snores, as were several others;
the united breathings of the horizonal assemblage forming a subdued
roar like London from a distance.  Joseph Poorgrass was curled round
in the fashion of a hedge-hog, apparently in attempts to present the
least possible portion of his surface to the air; and behind him
was dimly visible an unimportant remnant of William Smallbury.
The glasses and cups still stood upon the table, a water-jug being
overturned, from which a small rill, after tracing its course with
marvellous precision down the centre of the long table, fell into the
neck of the unconscious Mark Clark, in a steady, monotonous drip,
like the dripping of a stalactite in a cave.

Gabriel glanced hopelessly at the group, which, with one or two
exceptions, composed all the able-bodied men upon the farm.  He saw
at once that if the ricks were to be saved that night, or even the
next morning, he must save them with his own hands.

A faint "ting-ting" resounded from under Coggan's waistcoat.  It was
Coggan's watch striking the hour of two.

Oak went to the recumbent form of Matthew Moon, who usually undertook
the rough thatching of the home-stead, and shook him.  The shaking
was without effect.

Gabriel shouted in his ear, "where's your thatching-beetle and
rick-stick and spars?"

"Under the staddles," said Moon, mechanically, with the unconscious
promptness of a medium.

Gabriel let go his head, and it dropped upon the floor like a bowl.
He then went to Susan Tall's husband.

"Where's the key of the granary?"

No answer.  The question was repeated, with the same result.  To be
shouted to at night was evidently less of a novelty to Susan Tall's
husband than to Matthew Moon.  Oak flung down Tall's head into the
corner again and turned away.

To be just, the men were not greatly to blame for this painful and
demoralizing termination to the evening's entertainment.  Sergeant
Troy had so strenuously insisted, glass in hand, that drinking should
be the bond of their union, that those who wished to refuse hardly
liked to be so unmannerly under the circumstances.  Having from their
youth up been entirely unaccustomed to any liquor stronger than cider
or mild ale, it was no wonder that they had succumbed, one and all,
with extraordinary uniformity, after the lapse of about an hour.

Gabriel was greatly depressed.  This debauch boded ill for that
wilful and fascinating mistress whom the faithful man even now felt
within him as the embodiment of all that was sweet and bright and
hopeless.

He put out the expiring lights, that the barn might not be
endangered, closed the door upon the men in their deep and oblivious
sleep, and went again into the lone night.  A hot breeze, as if
breathed from the parted lips of some dragon about to swallow the
globe, fanned him from the south, while directly opposite in the
north rose a grim misshapen body of cloud, in the very teeth of the
wind.  So unnaturally did it rise that one could fancy it to be
lifted by machinery from below.  Meanwhile the faint cloudlets had
flown back into the south-east corner of the sky, as if in terror of
the large cloud, like a young brood gazed in upon by some monster.

Going on to the village, Oak flung a small stone against the window
of Laban Tall's bedroom, expecting Susan to open it; but nobody
stirred.  He went round to the back door, which had been left
unfastened for Laban's entry, and passed in to the foot of the
staircase.

"Mrs. Tall, I've come for the key of the granary, to get at the
rick-cloths," said Oak, in a stentorian voice.

"Is that you?" said Mrs. Susan Tall, half awake.

"Yes," said Gabriel.

"Come along to bed, do, you drawlatching rogue--keeping a body awake
like this!"

"It isn't Laban--'tis Gabriel Oak.  I want the key of the granary."

"Gabriel!  What in the name of fortune did you pretend to be Laban
for?"

"I didn't.  I thought you meant--"

"Yes you did!  What do you want here?"

"The key of the granary."

"Take it then.  'Tis on the nail.  People coming disturbing women at
this time of night ought--"

Gabriel took the key, without waiting to hear the conclusion of the
tirade.  Ten minutes later his lonely figure might have been seen
dragging four large water-proof coverings across the yard, and soon
two of these heaps of treasure in grain were covered snug--two cloths
to each.  Two hundred pounds were secured.  Three wheat-stacks
remained open, and there were no more cloths.  Oak looked under the
staddles and found a fork.  He mounted the third pile of wealth and
began operating, adopting the plan of sloping the upper sheaves one
over the other; and, in addition, filling the interstices with the
material of some untied sheaves.

So far all was well.  By this hurried contrivance Bathsheba's
property in wheat was safe for at any rate a week or two, provided
always that there was not much wind.

Next came the barley.  This it was only possible to protect by
systematic thatching.  Time went on, and the moon vanished not to
reappear.  It was the farewell of the ambassador previous to war.
The night had a haggard look, like a sick thing; and there came
finally an utter expiration of air from the whole heaven in the form
of a slow breeze, which might have been likened to a death.  And now
nothing was heard in the yard but the dull thuds of the beetle which
drove in the spars, and the rustle of thatch in the intervals.

THE STORM--THE TWO TOGETHER

A light flapped over the scene, as if reflected from phosphorescent
wings crossing the sky, and a rumble filled the air.  It was the
first move of the approaching storm.

The second peal was noisy, with comparatively little visible
lightning.  Gabriel saw a candle shining in Bathsheba's bedroom,
and soon a shadow swept to and fro upon the blind.

Then there came a third flash.  Manoeuvres of a most extraordinary
kind were going on in the vast firmamental hollows overhead.  The
lightning now was the colour of silver, and gleamed in the heavens
like a mailed army. Rumbles became rattles.  Gabriel from his
elevated position could see over the landscape at least half-a-dozen
miles in front.  Every hedge, bush, and tree was distinct as in a
line engraving.  In a paddock in the same direction was a herd of
heifers, and the forms of these were visible at this moment in the
act of galloping about in the wildest and maddest confusion, flinging
their heels and tails high into the air, their heads to earth.
A poplar in the immediate foreground was like an ink stroke on
burnished tin.  Then the picture vanished, leaving the darkness so
intense that Gabriel worked entirely by feeling with his hands.

He had stuck his ricking-rod, or poniard, as it was indifferently
called--a long iron lance, polished by handling--into the stack,
used to support the sheaves instead of the support called a groom
used on houses.  A blue light appeared in the zenith, and in some
indescribable manner flickered down near the top of the rod.  It
was the fourth of the larger flashes.  A moment later and there was
a smack--smart, clear, and short.  Gabriel felt his position to be
anything but a safe one, and he resolved to descend.

Not a drop of rain had fallen as yet.  He wiped his weary brow, and
looked again at the black forms of the unprotected stacks.  Was his
life so valuable to him after all?  What were his prospects that he
should be so chary of running risk, when important and urgent labour
could not be carried on without such risk?  He resolved to stick to
the stack.  However, he took a precaution.  Under the staddles was a
long tethering chain, used to prevent the escape of errant horses.
This he carried up the ladder, and sticking his rod through the clog
at one end, allowed the other end of the chain to trail upon the
ground.  The spike attached to it he drove in.  Under the shadow of
this extemporized lightning-conductor he felt himself comparatively
safe.

Before Oak had laid his hands upon his tools again out leapt the
fifth flash, with the spring of a serpent and the shout of a fiend.
It was green as an emerald, and the reverberation was stunning.  What
was this the light revealed to him?  In the open ground before him,
as he looked over the ridge of the rick, was a dark and apparently
female form.  Could it be that of the only venturesome woman in the
parish--Bathsheba?  The form moved on a step: then he could see no
more.

"Is that you, ma'am?" said Gabriel to the darkness.

"Who is there?" said the voice of Bathsheba.

"Gabriel.  I am on the rick, thatching."

"Oh, Gabriel!--and are you?  I have come about them.  The weather
awoke me, and I thought of the corn.  I am so distressed about
it--can we save it anyhow?  I cannot find my husband.  Is he with
you?"

"He is not here."

"Do you know where he is?"

"Asleep in the barn."

"He promised that the stacks should be seen to, and now they are all
neglected!  Can I do anything to help?  Liddy is afraid to come out.
Fancy finding you here at such an hour!  Surely I can do something?"

"You can bring up some reed-sheaves to me, one by one, ma'am; if you
are not afraid to come up the ladder in the dark," said Gabriel.
"Every moment is precious now, and that would save a good deal of
time.  It is not very dark when the lightning has been gone a bit."

"I'll do anything!" she said, resolutely.  She instantly took a sheaf
upon her shoulder, clambered up close to his heels, placed it behind
the rod, and descended for another.  At her third ascent the rick
suddenly brightened with the brazen glare of shining majolica--every
knot in every straw was visible.  On the slope in front of him
appeared two human shapes, black as jet.  The rick lost its
sheen--the shapes vanished.  Gabriel turned his head.  It had been
the sixth flash which had come from the east behind him, and the two
dark forms on the slope had been the shadows of himself and
Bathsheba.

Then came the peal.  It hardly was credible that such a heavenly
light could be the parent of such a diabolical sound.

"How terrible!" she exclaimed, and clutched him by the sleeve.
Gabriel turned, and steadied her on her aerial perch by holding
her arm.  At the same moment, while he was still reversed in his
attitude, there was more light, and he saw, as it were, a copy of the
tall poplar tree on the hill drawn in black on the wall of the barn.
It was the shadow of that tree, thrown across by a secondary flash
in the west.

The next flare came.  Bathsheba was on the ground now, shouldering
another sheaf, and she bore its dazzle without flinching--thunder
and all--and again ascended with the load.  There was then a silence
everywhere for four or five minutes, and the crunch of the spars, as
Gabriel hastily drove them in, could again be distinctly heard.  He
thought the crisis of the storm had passed.  But there came a burst
of light.

"Hold on!" said Gabriel, taking the sheaf from her shoulder, and
grasping her arm again.

Heaven opened then, indeed.  The flash was almost too novel for its
inexpressibly dangerous nature to be at once realized, and they could
only comprehend the magnificence of its beauty.  It sprang from
east, west, north, south, and was a perfect dance of death.  The
forms of skeletons appeared in the air, shaped with blue fire for
bones--dancing, leaping, striding, racing around, and mingling
altogether in unparalleled confusion.  With these were intertwined
undulating snakes of green, and behind these was a broad mass of
lesser light.  Simultaneously came from every part of the tumbling
sky what may be called a shout; since, though no shout ever came
near it, it was more of the nature of a shout than of anything else
earthly.  In the meantime one of the grisly forms had alighted upon
the point of Gabriel's rod, to run invisibly down it, down the chain,
and into the earth.  Gabriel was almost blinded, and he could feel
Bathsheba's warm arm tremble in his hand--a sensation novel and
thrilling enough; but love, life, everything human, seemed small and
trifling in such close juxtaposition with an infuriated universe.

Oak had hardly time to gather up these impressions into a thought,
and to see how strangely the red feather of her hat shone in this
light, when the tall tree on the hill before mentioned seemed on fire
to a white heat, and a new one among these terrible voices mingled
with the last crash of those preceding.  It was a stupefying blast,
harsh and pitiless, and it fell upon their ears in a dead, flat blow,
without that reverberation which lends the tones of a drum to more
distant thunder.  By the lustre reflected from every part of the
earth and from the wide domical scoop above it, he saw that the
tree was sliced down the whole length of its tall, straight stem, a
huge riband of bark being apparently flung off.  The other portion
remained erect, and revealed the bared surface as a strip of white
down the front.  The lightning had struck the tree.  A sulphurous
smell filled the air; then all was silent, and black as a cave in
Hinnom.

"We had a narrow escape!" said Gabriel, hurriedly.  "You had better
go down."

Bathsheba said nothing; but he could distinctly hear her rhythmical
pants, and the recurrent rustle of the sheaf beside her in response
to her frightened pulsations.  She descended the ladder, and, on
second thoughts, he followed her.  The darkness was now impenetrable
by the sharpest vision.  They both stood still at the bottom, side by
side.  Bathsheba appeared to think only of the weather--Oak thought
only of her just then.  At last he said--

"The storm seems to have passed now, at any rate."

"I think so too," said Bathsheba.  "Though there are multitudes of
gleams, look!"

The sky was now filled with an incessant light, frequent repetition
melting into complete continuity, as an unbroken sound results from
the successive strokes on a gong.

"Nothing serious," said he.  "I cannot understand no rain falling.
But Heaven be praised, it is all the better for us.  I am now going
up again."

"Gabriel, you are kinder than I deserve!  I will stay and help you
yet.  Oh, why are not some of the others here!"

"They would have been here if they could," said Oak, in a hesitating
way.

"O, I know it all--all," she said, adding slowly: "They are all
asleep in the barn, in a drunken sleep, and my husband among them.
That's it, is it not?  Don't think I am a timid woman and can't
endure things."

"I am not certain," said Gabriel.  "I will go and see."

He crossed to the barn, leaving her there alone.  He looked through
the chinks of the door.  All was in total darkness, as he had left
it, and there still arose, as at the former time, the steady buzz of
many snores.

He felt a zephyr curling about his cheek, and turned.  It was
Bathsheba's breath--she had followed him, and was looking into the
same chink.

He endeavoured to put off the immediate and painful subject of
their thoughts by remarking gently, "If you'll come back again,
miss--ma'am, and hand up a few more; it would save much time."

Then Oak went back again, ascended to the top, stepped off the ladder
for greater expedition, and went on thatching.  She followed, but
without a sheaf.

"Gabriel," she said, in a strange and impressive voice.

Oak looked up at her.  She had not spoken since he left the barn.
The soft and continual shimmer of the dying lightning showed a marble
face high against the black sky of the opposite quarter.  Bathsheba
was sitting almost on the apex of the stack, her feet gathered up
beneath her, and resting on the top round of the ladder.

"Yes, mistress," he said.

"I suppose you thought that when I galloped away to Bath that night
it was on purpose to be married?"

"I did at last--not at first," he answered, somewhat surprised at the
abruptness with which this new subject was broached.

"And others thought so, too?"

"Yes."

"And you blamed me for it?"

"Well--a little."

"I thought so.  Now, I care a little for your good opinion, and
I want to explain something--I have longed to do it ever since I
returned, and you looked so gravely at me.  For if I were to die--and
I may die soon--it would be dreadful that you should always think
mistakenly of me.  Now, listen."

Gabriel ceased his rustling.

"I went to Bath that night in the full intention of breaking off my
engagement to Mr. Troy.  It was owing to circumstances which occurred
after I got there that--that we were married.  Now, do you see the
matter in a new light?"

"I do--somewhat."

"I must, I suppose, say more, now that I have begun.  And perhaps
it's no harm, for you are certainly under no delusion that I ever
loved you, or that I can have any object in speaking, more than that
object I have mentioned.  Well, I was alone in a strange city, and
the horse was lame.  And at last I didn't know what to do.  I saw,
when it was too late, that scandal might seize hold of me for meeting
him alone in that way.  But I was coming away, when he suddenly said
he had that day seen a woman more beautiful than I, and that his
constancy could not be counted on unless I at once became his....
And I was grieved and troubled--"  She cleared her voice, and waited
a moment, as if to gather breath.  "And then, between jealousy
and distraction, I married him!" she whispered with desperate
impetuosity.

Gabriel made no reply.

"He was not to blame, for it was perfectly true about--about his
seeing somebody else," she quickly added.  "And now I don't wish for
a single remark from you upon the subject--indeed, I forbid it.  I
only wanted you to know that misunderstood bit of my history before
a time comes when you could never know it.--You want some more
sheaves?"

She went down the ladder, and the work proceeded.  Gabriel soon
perceived a languor in the movements of his mistress up and down, and
he said to her, gently as a mother--

"I think you had better go indoors now, you are tired.  I can finish
the rest alone.  If the wind does not change the rain is likely to
keep off."

"If I am useless I will go," said Bathsheba, in a flagging cadence.
"But O, if your life should be lost!"

"You are not useless; but I would rather not tire you longer.  You
have done well."

"And you better!" she said, gratefully.  "Thank you for your
devotion, a thousand times, Gabriel!  Goodnight--I know you are doing
your very best for me."

She diminished in the gloom, and vanished, and he heard the latch
of the gate fall as she passed through.  He worked in a reverie
now, musing upon her story, and upon the contradictoriness of that
feminine heart which had caused her to speak more warmly to him
to-night than she ever had done whilst unmarried and free to speak
as warmly as she chose.

He was disturbed in his meditation by a grating noise from the
coach-house.  It was the vane on the roof turning round, and this
change in the wind was the signal for a disastrous rain.

Several weeks pass, with Bathsheba sending word that she has been delayed. Then Cainy Ball comes back to the farm in great excitement, explaining that he saw Bathsheba and Troy together in Bath. Gabriel is alarmed by this news, but feels relieved when later that same night he sees Liddy and Bathsheba driving back to the farm together. Boldwood also sees that Bathsheba has returned and tries to call upon her, but is dismayed to find that she will not receive him. As he makes his way home, Boldwood sees Troy first arriving at his lodging and then departing a short time later with a bag of possessions. Boldwood confronts Troy on the road, and accuses him of having wronged Fanny by not marrying her after her reputation was compromised. Troy replies that he is willing to marry Fanny, but doesn't have the income to do so. Boldwood explains that he believes Bathsheba would have married him if Troy had not distracted her: he now proposes that if Troy leaves Weatherbury and marries Fanny, Boldwood will give him a significant sum of money. Troy agrees to the plan and takes the initial deposit of money from Boldwood. The two men hear the sound of Bathsheba approaching, and Troy explains that the two had a plan to meet. He thinks it would be best to speak with her and break off the relationship so that she is not left wondering what happened. Boldwood reluctantly agrees to let Troy speak to her so long as he can remain hidden and listen to the conversation. Bathsheba greets Troy warmly, telling him that since the house is empty it will be easy for him to come to her. Troy tells her that he just needs to fetch his things and then he will follow her to the farmhouse, and Bathsheba sets off to await her lover. Boldwood is now under the impression that Bathsheba has become involved in a sexual relationship with Troy and, although he is furious, he believes Troy must marry her after all. Troy torments Boldwood by seeming committed to the plan of marrying Fanny, forcing Boldwood to beg him to marry Bathsheba and even offer to pay him to do so. Troy agrees to accept the money and Boldwood asks for a written agreement, so the two men go to Bathsheba' s house to finalize the arrangement and tell her what has happened. Once there, Troy shows Boldwood proof that he is already married to Bathsheba and contemptuously returns the money. Very early the next morning as Coggan and Gabriel are walking by the farmhouse, they glimpse Troy in one of the bedroom windows, and realize this means that he and Bathsheba are married. Troy greets them in a friendly way, discussing his plans to renovate and redecorate the old fashioned farmhouse. He mentions that he will eventually begin contributing to working the farm, but has other matters to settle for the time being. Gabriel is grief-stricken, disappointed, and suspicious of what the marriage may mean for the future of the farm. A few weeks later, at the end of August, the harvest-supper is being held to celebrate at the farm. As he approaches the festivities, Gabriel notes that the weather suggests a severe storm is coming, and that much of the harvest has been left out and unprotected. Gabriel goes in to the supper, where everyone is celebrating by drinking and dancing, and tries to tell Troy that the harvested crops should be protected before the rain starts. Troy ignores him, and begins serving large amounts of alcohol to all the men gathered at the party. Since he is not interested in drinking, Gabriel leaves the party. As he passes through the farm, the behavior of various animals convinces him that there is going to be a violent thunderstorm, and then severe rain. Gabriel knows that if the crops are ruined by the storm, there will be a huge economic loss and he returns to the party to get help covering them up. However, everyone there has drunk themselves into a stupor, so Gabriel gathers the necessary supplies alone. He is still at work when the thunder and lightning begin, putting him in a hazardous position. Bathsheba joins him, eager to help and try and protect as many of her crops as she can. The two of them go to the barn to see if anyone can help them, but after confirming that the other men are all too drunk to help, they continue to work alone. As they work, Bathsheba explains that she did not leave for Bath intending to marry Troy. Instead, she went planning to end their relationship. When she got there, she became worried by the idea that her reputation might be damaged and Troy made her jealous by telling her he had seen a woman who was more beautiful than she was. She married him impulsively as a result. When the rain starts, Bathsheba leaves and Gabriel works all night to finish the task. In the morning, he runs into Boldwood as he is making his way home. Boldwood explains that he had been too distracted to cover his crops, and that now much of it has been ruined. Gabriel realizes how devastated Boldwood is by Bathsheba's marriage.

The lack of news from Bathsheba leaves everyone in suspense, particularly Boldwood and Gabriel. Boldwood is still determined to end the relationship between Bathsheba and Troy, and he is willing to use Fanny as a bargaining tool. Interestingly, if Boldwood truly believes Troy to be an unsuitable husband, he should not be so willing to urge him to marry Fanny. Possibly because Fanny's working-class background makes him less protective of her, but more likely because it will serve his own interest, Boldwood offers Troy money in exchange for a promise to marry Fanny. By offering this exchange, Boldwood demonstrates that he sees profit as being central to most people's motives, and also that he assumes money is a key factor in choosing a marriage partner. His assumption that someone would naturally want to marry their wealthiest option is part of why he finds it so hard to understand that Bathsheba might prefer another man rather than him. Despite his cynicism, Boldwood is still quite naive, which leads him to be cruelly tricked and tormented by Troy. Troy puts Boldwood in the torturous position of having to beg his enemy and rival to marry the woman he loves. On one hand, his willingness to do so seems to suggest that Boldwood is capable of putting Bathsheba first, and prioritizing the need to protect her reputation. On the other hand, his insistence that she and Troy marry once he comes to believe that they are sleeping together perhaps also suggests that he is somewhat disgusted by the idea of the woman he has placed on a pedestal now being tainted. Troy is actually quite astute when he criticizes how readily Boldwood fell for the trap, and how quick he was to believe that Bathsheba was sleeping with Troy. Although Boldwood idolizes Bathsheba, he does not seem to have much respect for her. The whole exchange ends up being irrelevant once it is clear that Bathsheba and Troy are already married. Although no one seems happy about this outcome, the marriage is binding and irrevocable. Troy quickly demonstrates that he is out of step with the way of life on the farm; his comments on modernizing the farmhouse show that he does not respect tradition, and that he wants to impose his own values onto a long-held way of life. Events at the harvest supper make this pattern even more clear: Troy quite literally intoxicates and poisons the modest farm workers with substances that are too strong for them to handle. Troy is unable to prioritize the long-term future over short-term gratification; he is used to getting what he wants, and sees no reason to put his responsibilities ahead of his pleasure. By working to protect the crops from the storm, even in a dangerous and unpleasant situation, Gabriel takes his loyalty to Bathsheba and her farm to the most extreme point so far. At this time, as the wife of another man, Gabriel certainly does not have any moral responsibility to help her. Even as her employee, Gabriel would be justified in feeling he had done all he could after he warned Troy and Troy ignored him. Still, he is compelled to do the right thing, even though there can be no possibility of this fidelity being rewarded. Gabriel's totally unselfish loyalty to doing whatever Bathsheba needs contrasts starkly with how the man who actually vowed to protect her behaves.